Today is Thanksgiving. The firearm deer season is half over. Has it been fun? Are you satisfied? Are you thankful?
If your answers hinge upon hanging a big buck on your wall, statistically speaking, you’re probably unhappy, dissatisfied and thankless. But if your answers come from your attitude toward the hunt, you very well may be in the middle of the two happiest weeks of the year. Perhaps no one knows this better than Zach Ward.
Ward grew up running the mountains of North Carolina as he chased rabbits, squirrels and deer. When I met him back in 2006, Ward had recently been discharged from the Coast Guard and had a slight hitch in his step. Today, it is with great effort that he takes a step at all. Ward has a type of early onset muscular dystrophy (MD) that attacks the extremities. Now when he hunts, he hunts from a tracked wheelchair.
MD slowly deteriorates your muscles. For most of us, muscle use causes burn as the muscles tear, but then they heal stronger than ever. No pain, no gain. For Ward, the muscles tear and then never heal. You use it, you lose it. It’s a very slow atrophy process. There’s a price to pay for every physical activity he chooses to engage in. A very lasting price.
This would be a tough pill for anyone to swallow, but especially tough if you’re a member of a close-knit, young, athletic, highly knowledgeable, highly motivated and highly competitive group of hunters. That was Ward, and the news of his condition hit him hard. He first noticed the symptoms in boot camp, but thought he had simply hurt his back. In 2006 he loved the Coast Guard and planned to make a full career of it. But back then, if you were not fit for active duty, you were not fit for any duty.
“The day I found out, the captain called me up on the ship, and he was crying. He said, ‘You’re going to have to be discharged. That’s all there is to it.’ It was heartbreaking. I got home, went to my room, sat down on my bed and had a cry fit. What did I do? Why? Why? Why? But when I got up, from that moment on, I had a peace. These are the cards I have been dealt. If You’ve [God] got me here, You’re going to get me through it. That was the faith part. And then after that, it is what it is. Don’t quit. At the time, it wasn’t that bad. I could still do most of what I wanted, so it didn’t bother me that much. But I think God does that. [Bring it on gradually] He doesn’t put you through something you can’t get through. If I had gone from good health to where I am today that fast, it would have been much worse.”
Ward talks with wisdom and hindsight. He doesn’t expect pity, and he definitely doesn’t want it. But truth be told, accepting his physical limitations and how they have affected his hunting has not been easy. He’s not always been happy.
When Ward’s son came of age to hunt, he used to take him squirrel hunting but only until the deer season came into full swing. Then he was off chasing big bucks. And it nearly ate him alive.
“That year was probably the worst year of deer hunting I’ve ever had. I was just angry. I’d go, and I always felt like I was just behind, or it wasn’t connecting. It was miserable. I had good deer on camera. I’m like ‘I gotta get these deer’ and then something would happen and the landowner would want to hunt, and he would not hunt the way I would, so it was just an unhappy experience. I ended the year just down in the dumps, but at the time I didn’t realize it.
“I put a lot of pressure on myself to kill good bucks. I loved to hunt. I talked hunting all the time with a circle of friends. I felt like, if I’m going to talk the talk, I have to walk the walk. And it was starting to get real hard because I couldn’t hunt the way I knew I needed to in order to kill mature bucks. My physical limitations — I needed to drive somewhere because I couldn’t walk. Big bucks don’t like cars. They don’t like trucks. They don’t like noise.”
It wasn’t until the following year that Ward gained perspective.
He took his son and daughters squirrel hunting. He watched them smile and laugh. He put their needs first and drew strength from their enjoyment of just being afield. Deer hunting took a backseat to squirrel hunting with his children.
God seemed to nod in approval.
“So that year I killed two good bucks. [He looks up to two bucks in his den. One is shoulder mount. The other is an impressive Euro mount.] Was it divine intervention? Was it the fact that it was just my year? I’ve got my own intuitions about it, but it was a very successful year as far as harvesting good bucks.”
I’d like to say that things were all sunshine and roses from this point forward. Zach Ward gains perspective. He puts his family first. He’s rewarded with wisdom, contentment and big bucks from that point forward. But life doesn’t work that way. You and I both know that, and so does Ward.
A few years later, he’s in Ohio on a self-guided public land hunt with seven other Michigan hunters. He’s back in camp while a couple others have shot big bucks. He can’t help track them. He can’t help drag them out. He’s left alone with his doubts and his sense of self-pity.
Finally, he goes out to a powerline he planned to hunt, and linemen are actually working on the powerline. Then his tracked wheelchair slips from its ramp and almost destroys his tailgate. He’s about to collapse in frustration and self-pity when God Himself tells him to suck it up and quit feeling sorry for himself. So he takes a deep breath, slaps himself a few times, rolls off into the woods along a logging road and shoots the biggest buck of his life.
That’s a wonderful story, and I don’t have the space to tell it here. But I can tell you this. Zach Ward gets is. He’s like the Jesus Christ of hunting who shows the rest of us the way. It took him coping with muscular dystrophy to learn what he’s willing to share with all of us for free.
“The three things I’m gonna ask [God} when I get there are, ‘Why mosquitoes? Why in northern Michigan is it always bloody raining and windy on the weekends in the fall? And all those times, what were you trying to teach me?’ But at that point, it ain’t gonna matter when you’re face to face.
“The other thing is contentment. That’s what I’ve learned. Happiness is not stuff and racks. Happiness is not guns (even though I enjoy having a lot of guns).
Happiness is actual contentment with what you do have.
The people, my mentors, who are the happiest are the ones who are content with what they’ve got going, whether they’re sitting at a football game on Friday night [or out in the deer blind hunting for a deer]. I just feel like once you realize that, is when you can actually be happy.
“My job at marinas in Harbor Springs and Charlevoix over the years — I’ve talked to some of the wealthiest people in Michigan, if not in the world. They ain’t no happier, (and most of the time are angrier) than I will ever be. I’m looking at them going, ‘You’re healthy. You’ve got a beautiful wife in your car, the best sportscar and the best of the boats, and you are a grumpy son of a gun. What is wrong with you? You know how many people would kill for what you have?’ But then you see a farmer who has lived on the same 10 acres for his whole life, and he’s just as happy as can be. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.
It’s just about being content with what you have.
“I can say that like I’m good at it, but I’m not yet. I realize when I take a step back, I want to go sit in that blind. I want to go track in the swamp. But I’m sitting in this truck. [Ward’s muscles have weakened to the point where he has a shoot from the vehicle permit.] Just be content. I’m happy that I get to do this.”
You’ve got one more week of firearm deer season. Enjoy it.