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Cerebral palsy can’t stop 11-year-old from getting her deer |
 SPARKMAN
- Success stories abounded all across Arkansas after the special two-day
youth deer hunt on Nov. 5-6.Thousands of youngsters went deer hunting on “their” two days, and many were successful in getting deer. That was the bottom line sought by commissioners of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission when they created the special season. Taihlor Flowers is just 11 years old, and she had further to go than the other eager, excited young hunters across Arkansas. Taihlor is confined to a wheelchair with cerebral palsy. She holds her own in classwork at Bob Courtway Middle School in Conway, but deer hunting produces a variety of hurdles for her. She cleared all the obstacles. She killed a button buck near Sparkman in Dallas County with one shot from her .223 rifle. Taihlor has been around hunting all her young life. She’s a daughter of Matt and Amy Skelton of Conway, and Matt has been deer hunting himself on that same tract in south Arkansas since he was about Taihlor’s age. Several times in recent years Taihlor has gone along with Matt on a deer hunt but as a companion or observer, not as a hunter. This year, it was her turn. Matt and his uncle, Ronnie Robertson, have been active in Central Arkansas Buckmasters and the club’s ongoing project to raise money for power-lift deer stands for aiding wheelchair-using sportsmen. Taihlor had the use of one of these stands for the 2005 youth hunt. She didn’t have to wait long the first morning of the hunt. One deer came within a few yards just after daylight, but it wasn’t in a position for Taihlor to shoot. Then a second deer approached. The stand was on the edge of a food plot. This time, Taihlor could see it over her New England single-shot rifle in its vise across her wheelchair. Matt quietly cocked the hammer for her. The rifle was equipped with a laser, and when the red shot stopped on the button buck’s shoulder, Taihlor inhaled. Yes, she sucked in hard on a tube attached to a battery-assisted trigger mechanism. Her shot went through both lungs of the deer, and it dropped immediately. It was 7 o’clock on opening morning. This was Taihlor’s own rifle, the .223 in a short or youth configuration. She bought it herself at a fund-raising auction. Taihlor was back in the deer woods on Nov. 12, opening day of the regular modern gun season. No deer showed up, but a fox did, close to her stand. But Taihlor didn’t shoot. She told her uncle, “We’re not fox hunting. We’re deer hunting.” |
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