Rhinelander man receives 2008 Ethical Hunter Award

[Skunk]

Now here's a good Samaritan story if I've every heard one. I would have hated to be the boyfriend and face the wrath of this young gal when she got the Buck home.

http://anglerguide.com/outdoors/news/detail.cfm?id=1457

News Source: Wisconsin DNR - Mar. 03, 2009EAU CLAIRE, Wis.

Somewhere in northwest Wisconsin there is a boyfriend, probably an ex-boyfriend, who had to eat crow for his tavern lunch.

He is but a minor player in this tale, however. The starring role goes to Nick Owens of Rhinelander, an 18-year-old graduate of Rhinelander High School and the recipient of the statewide Hunter Ethics Award for 2008. The award is co sponsored by the La Crosse Tribune and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Nick Owens, recipient of 2008 Wisconsin Hunter Ethics Award

Owens' story begins on a Tuesday, the fourth day of Wisconsin’s 2008 gun deer hunt. Owens, who has been hunting effectively with bow and gun since he was 12, was driving around Burnett County, scouting public land, when he came upon a young woman dressed in hunter orange. She was standing outside her pickup truck, sobbing.

"I thought somebody got shot," Owens said. "I have training in first aid. I figured I’d help out if I could."

She told him she had shot a deer, a big buck, or thought she had. She didn’t know where it was. She came out of the woods to call her boyfriend. He was sitting in a tavern. He told her he wouldn't help her. He said he didn’t believe her, didn't believe she’d shot a buck.

That's why she was crying, Owens said.

"I'm like, "That isn't a very nice boyfriend," and she said, "You got that right.”

She was maybe 19 or 20 years old, he guessed, short and slender. He noticed she was hunting with an old, dinged-up 30-30 lever action rifle, a museum piece, without a scope. He offered to find the deer for her and to field dress it.

"You would really do that?" she said.

He followed her into a thickly forested section of public land most hunters pass by because the woods are too dense to offer shooting lanes. After a long hike they came upon an oval-shaped opening, 50 by 100 yards, a leatherleaf bog. It was her grandfather’s secret hunting spot, she said, passed down to her father and then to her, her father’s only child. She’d staked it out for three cold days, dawn to dusk, without seeing a single deer. Then on the fourth day, a monster buck wandered into view. She took careful aim and fired.

Owens easily found the deer lying belly up in a patch of scrub oak. The sight of it took his breath away.

"Oh my God," he exclaimed. "Do you know you shot a once-in-a-lifetime deer?"

He was looking at a 17-point buck that would weigh more than 200 pounds after being gutted. Shooting with open sights, her shot placement had been near perfect.

She showed Owens the ground blind she had formed with pine boughs. She'd dug a hole in the center, put a small propane lantern down into it and set a stool on the ground above. She’d sit on the stool and wrap a blanket around herself, holding in the heat.

It was all Owens could do to drag that buck to the road. His companion walked along with her hand on the other side of the great antlers, but as far as Owens could tell, there wasn’t any net gain in forward momentum. He was soaking wet and sucking wind when they got to the road. He had no hope of lifting her trophy into her truck.

"I couldn't even get its shoulder off the ground," Owens said.

Some other hunters came by and helped load the buck. She asked them not to take pictures. Owens guessed she was trying to guard the secret of her grandfather's hunting spot. Then she started hyper-ventilating. The excitement of it all had finally hit her.

Once she got her breath, she thanked the young man who’d spent two back-breaking hours saving her hunt. She offered him money. He wouldn’t hear of it. Then she drove off. She had a deer to register and a score to settle.

Owens was nominated for the Hunter Ethics Award by Conservation Warden Dave Swanson of Minong. The statewide award was created in 1997 by warden supervisor Steve Dewald and two outdoor writers for the La Crosse Tribune, Jerry Davis and Bob Lamb. Most stories about deer hunters, they couldn’t help but notice, involved poaching arrests.

“We were concerned the non-hunting public would think there is no good news about hunters,” Dewald said. “As a warden, I know most hunters are ethical. Their story was not being told.”

Owens will receive the award when the Natural Resources Board meets at Hayward in August. Dewald will be there.

"Seeing these awards is one of the most enjoyable parts of my year," he said. We continue to get nominations from around the state. These random acts of selflessness paint a truer picture of hunters, and they have a profound effect on the people who experience them.

[Cheesehead]

The boy friend should get some kind of award.

Cheese

[Skunk]

The boy friend should get some kind of award.

Maybe like the Butthole of the week, or the too drunk and wasted to care award?

[TribReady]

Nice to see a good story like this coming out of WI recently

He gets the "award", and deservedly so, but I'd bet 90+% of GBO members would have done the same.  His efforts should be commonplace, but unfortunately aren't these days.

[SHOOTALL]

it could have been a set up , the boy friend shot the deer and girl friend conned someone into the work !

Kidding guys that was a nice deed !