Wendy Wobble rolled her chair’s wheels higher onto the narrow platform inside a deer stand near Arkabutla Lake in Tate County. The panoramic evergreens and the smell of autumn frost charged rapid-fire sensations into the hunter’s sensibilities while she balanced her rifle’s barrel onto the tripod. As she adjusted her eye through the scope’s lens, darkness splintered into light.
Beneath the moonlight and stars, she waited—focusing on listening, breathing and stillness. She felt alive.
While settled in that deer stand anticipating signs of prey, Womble reminisced about her adolescent restlessness accompanying the first few sojourneys in the woods with her dad, Gary. He introduced her to deer hunting around Vicksburg, Mississippi.
On this December 2024 hunt, though, she summoned the demanding patience that the scenario required. Years of relearning how to live after a debilitating injury had steeled her will, and she was focused. “Once again in that stand, I had come full circle,” she later told the Mississippi Free Press.
It had been 16 years since Womble had been able to participate in a deer hunt, though she had since pursued it, in vain, from time to time—finding that even shooting a gun straight while in a wheelchair proved frustratingly impossible.
“I would ask all of my friends to take me hunting, but no one could figure out how it could be done—it was too difficult,” she lamented.
Hunting is a sport that for her has never simply been an enjoyable excursion. It’s a significant and passionate thread of who Womble is: adventuresome.
But such joy was closed instantly—like the discharge of a bullet—when, after pulling out of a gas station oh-so-close to home after visiting a friend at a hospital, an oncoming car collided with her SUV.
She was foolishly texting on her phone, Womble recalled, and had just brazenly unclipped her seat belt before the violent collision after sundown. “When paramedics arrived they found me in a hole off the side of the road,” she said.
First responders then rushed Womble, eerily, to the same hospital 10 miles away before airlifting her to another.
She suffered a broken back and punctured lungs and more internal injuries, but not one scratch. After three weeks of hospitalization and reliance on a ventilator, a doctor’s verdict meant she’d remain paralyzed from the chest down. She was 26 years old.
Her nurse predicted Womble’s battle with depression. But she neither shed a tear nor felt sorry for herself: Womble’s focus dug deeper on meeting the incredible challenge in her reshaped condition of raising her then 3-year-old daughter, Missy.
Her mountain was high. But she was alive.
First Time Again
With rehabilitation, Womble’s love for hunting shifted into dormancy, relegated to memories and stories—until years later and hundreds of miles away from home when, while in her wheelchair perched on a customized deer stand and with a specialized rifle strap, she aimed at a doe sashaying in her gun’s crosshairs.
“It was evening time, the last hunt of the weekend, and all I needed was one shot 60 yards away,” Womble boasted, recalling the redemptive hunt in 2024. “The experience re-ignited raw emotions, just like I had shot my very first deer.”
She had endured a long time for the precious opportunity, she said, and had many dreams of hunting. The elusive wait was worth it. After all, if overcoming a daunting handicap had taught her a lesson, it’s that persistence pays off.
So, a prolonged satisfaction of aiming her rifle at a deer was not going to discourage her on that first hunt back. In fact, it was trivial.
“I was going to keep trying, just keep trying,” she insisted. When the doe fell from her squeezed trigger, mixed emotions spilled over. “I wanted to jump out of the stand and run to the deer, but of course, I couldn’t. It was exhilarating,” she told the Mississippi Free Press.
Womble’s reclamation was not just one person’s triumph over life telling her “no.” It also represented a chance to recapture part of her soul cruelly stripped away in a flash. The experience lifted her confidence.
Since then, she has pursued other opportunities to hunt, and she has reignited another lost love, fishing, after recently discovering a deep-sea fishing trip also designed for the disabled.
While her celebrated reconnection to the outdoors as a disabled adult is uncommon, it’s not unique. Hers resembles those of other disabled outdoorsmen who have participated in this organized hunt every fall orchestrated collaboratively with community, conservation and compassion in mind.
Better Way to Get the Job Done
It was 1991 when Army Corp of Engineers supervisors at Arkabutla Lake in Coldwater, Mississippi, learned state biologists determined that an overcrowding deer population at the popular park needed to be addressed. In an instant, former park manager Dean Hunter had a novel idea: Instead of conducting a functional species kill, a controlled hunt for the disabled would accomplish the task.
With that conception came the creation of an annual, controlled disabled deer hunt that has continued for the last 34 years. Currently, 70 hunters—divided into two consecutive December weekend hunts—gather at Arkabutla in Tate County to help manage the local deer population.
Rob Hoff, the park’s land use manager and hunt coordinator, believes the event to be one of the largest of its kind across the country and certainly one of the earliest ones that became a model for others.
Functionally, the hunt—held over a restricted 1,200 acres where a staff of four and about 20 volunteers have erected around 35 deer stands or blinds—alleviates an overpopulation of deer at the 57,000-acre park. Too many deer can cause overgrazing and loss of biodiversity, Hoff explained, adding that overpopulation can also introduce various animal diseases and.otherwise be hazardous for animals and park visitors.
“Before the hunts, there was an average of one car accident a week (caused by deer),” he estimated.
The managed hunts have proven to be highly effective, Hoff offered, based on the data that state biologists have obtained by conducting regular conservation inspections. “Our goal is to eliminate 40 deer, and we hit that target each year thanks to these hunts,” Hoff said.
Wild Freedom
Mike Riley, whose parents owned a mom-and-pop grocery store, grew up on a farm near Arkabutla on which he hunted its woods and fished in its waters. When he was 6 years old, he was diagnosed with polio, causing him to lean on crutches for decades until he was 40. That’s when a returning health condition called post-polio syndrome weakened his legs to the point he needed the use of a wheelchair.
“He never, never lost his spirit or joy for the outdoors,” Lisa, his wife of 45 years, said. He typically accompanied his hunting buddies, who would take the extra time and effort to hoist him into stands alongside them.
“It was hard, but he never gave up,” she said.
Riley was one of nine participants in the original disabled hunt, for which organizers built deer stands with ramps designed for wheelchairs. The experience deeply inspired Riley, because it enabled him to hunt more independently and absorb the liberating sensation infused from most outdoor activities in nature, whether it’s hiking, sailing or hunting.
After attending the second hunt in 1992, Riley determined the annual experience should be expanded for others like him. He realized doing so, however, would take a lot of work, so he and some other enthusiasts established a formal support charity called Arkabutla Physically Challenged Hunting Association that covers the entire costs for the hunters’ weekend thrill.
“It’s especially important for him to assure new hunters at the event that they can learn to do this,” Lisa said, citing the nonprofit as her husband’s “legacy, his way of giving back.”
While some businesses donate goods like ammunition, the group generates around $10,000 throughout the year for the hunt, thanks to the contributions of around 100 small and large donors. The funds provide the purchase of gear, food for both weekends, firewood and other related expenses. Individuals who are quadriplegic, paraplegic or ambulatory with the help of leg braces or crutches, or who have other permanent physical limitations, may apply to be selected.
Volunteers assist participants in comprehensive fashion, helping with camouflaged gear, encouragement and off-road vehicle transports in and out of the trails. Each hunter is paired with a hunting guide, and participants use walkie talkies to ensure any needs they have are promptly met, including, with luck, help in corralling a successful kill.
An oversized interactive board, like a scoreboard, hangs high on a wall inside the assembly building. Organizers use markers to keep track, in real time, of which stands are occupied, recording both check-in and check-out times.
Volunteers and staff hold weekend work-days starting in October. Tasks include reinforcing stands, clearing brush along the trails and shooting lanes, and preparing the bunk houses for visitors. Safety preparations are a high priority, Hoff said.
A few months ago, the Army Corps of Engineers provided building materials to high-school students enrolled in the Senatobia-Tate County Career Technical Center, who built a blind for the hunt. Hoff is friends with the center’s new teacher, Alvin Whitehead, who helped arrange the students’ assistance
Lisa Riley joins Beth Brown, Mollie Floate and Kimmie Woodward as the dependable cooks inside the camp’s assembly building, named in honor of the Rileys in 2024. Hours before dawn, while hunters excitedly prepare to take their positions in their stands, the kitchen team cooks a hearty breakfast for participants. They later concoct soups or chilli and prepare other food for lunch, including deer-meat rollups and homemade cornbread, while offering smiles all around.
“We love doing this, and it’s not a job, only a blessing,” Riley said. “We are God’s hands and feet.”
Applicants are willing to travel from far away to participate. In the recent second weekend hunt from a few weeks ago, selected individuals trekked from Texas and Louisiana, with one traveling from as far away as Arizona to attend. Many, Hoff said, discover the opportunity, as Womble did, through an online search engine like Google.
‘In Control Again’
Over the many hunts, Hoff said the support group represents a window of empathy in action. While the hunts can be cathartic for participants, it’s often emotional and humbling for volunteers.
Hoff recalled a participant who had become paralyzed when the ATV he was riding rolled over and the vehicle’s hanging bar crushed his skull, leaving him partially blind. Determined, he later participated in the hunt with the help of his dad and the use of both a specialized gun scope linked to his phone and tripod.
“He shot about seven different times on hunts without success. It was truly special when he finally got his first doe, and last year he shot the biggest buck of the hunt,” Hoff remembered fondly, referring to the 2024 hunt.
Experiences like those are what fill the event’s supporters with pride and humility, Hoff said. “This makes you appreciate what you have,” he added, pausing to contain emotion. “These hunters are in control of their own hunt again, and you see people do things that they otherwise could not do.”
A Veteran’s Therapy
The charity’s supporters have a contact, Samuel Cooke, at the regional veteran’s hospital in Memphis who regularly connects veterans, some of whom have never deer hunted, and others who are experienced to the annual hunt.
Tim Lewis, 64, a resident of Brighton, Tennessee, has participated continually for 16 years. A native of Grass Valley, California—where he grew up hunting—he is a retired Navy chief who injured his back while in the service and after a tour in the Persian Gulf War, “from Kuwait all the way down to the Straits of Harmuz.”
He worked for a while after retirement from the Navy at a hardware store, but his impaired back forced him to quit. Lewis relies on a wheelchair.
Every autumn, he looks forward to the event where he’s made friends, and it continues to motivate him. “It’s a blast,” he said. “It means everything, including a little bit of camaraderie and going out and getting some good hunts. I love it. It’s better than being on a ship to sea.”
“The first time I came to this, it was therapy, and while its meaning for me may have changed over the years, it’s always been therapy,” Lewis reflected.
A Stand for Peace
When Nick Mitchell, of Horn Lake, Mississippi, arrived for the first time at the deer camp for the disabled hunt last month, he wasn’t sure what to find. He had very little experience hunting deer, but he had spent a lot of time squirrel and coon hunting beginning in the early 2000s.
His apprehension for the hunt, he said, arose from his skepticism regarding how easily he would be able to get in and down from a stand on top of concerns over whether the stand’s size or arrangements for shooting lanes would be accommodating enough.
The uncertainty but valuable opportunity initially created anxiousness, Mitchell explained. “It was like being a kid who watched and learned how to play baseball in the yard at home all winter, then taking that first pitch in spring ball,” he analogized.
Accompanied by his teenage son Jackson and wife Megan, Mitchell first took a seat around the campfire and listened to other hunters chat before sunrise. There, they discovered more hunters, tall tales, hot food and fellowship inside the assembly building, which helped the family relax before Hoff paired up the guest hunters with volunteers.
“Jackson was with me that first morning and had the burden of being the mule to carry everything around, but he was just as excited being at our first deer hunt together,” Mitchelll reflected.
Hoff led the pair to a stand near the entrance road that was big enough for both of them and for Jackson to move Hoff fully around if needed. “My son and I settled in together and just waited for daylight,” Mitchell remembered.
Sunshine revealed a 22-acre food plot in their purview and soon a series of deer darting in and out of their shooting range. At about 8 a.m., Mitchell said, three deer came into view: Two kept running toward a split in the treeline, but the last one paused long enough for Mitchell to fire one shot, about 90 yards away. His bullet struck precisely between the deer’s shoulders.
Father and son “celebrated,” as the kill was radioed into camp, signaling a volunteer to come and assist with retrieving the trophy.
“(The experience) meant a lot—to be able to get back in the woods, spend time with my son and my wife in the stands, just sitting and talking in that environment,” Mitchell said. “It also gave me a lot of peace of mind and away from the day-to-day distractions of regular life.”
Many might view the prepared event as “just a hunt,” he added, “but it can mean so much more for some of us.”
For more information on the annual disabled deer hunt in Coldwater, call Lisa Riley at 662-404-2991.