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Have you ever thought
something was impossible but tried it anyway? I was looking through my
North American Hunting Club magazine when I saw a sweepstakes
fundraiser ad for Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry (FHFH).
While lying in bed I couldn’t help but think how great of an idea FHFH
really was. The thought of all the families it affected and the lives
that it had saved was overwhelming.
I woke up the next morning
and went straight for that magazine, opened it to the page that the ad
was located and started to cut it out. I filled it out and sent it in
never thinking I would win anything at all because that just wasn’t my
luck.
A few months later my mom
asked me if I had ever seen “Mossy Oak Hunting the Country” on
TV. My mom doesn’t hunt or even watch hunting shows. I knew something
was up but I had no idea what it was. I thought she just got a good
deal on a video and wanted to make sure I liked it.
 Later
that night my mom got a phone call and talked for a while with a huge
grin on her face. Finally, she called me over and handed the phone to
me. I asked her who it was but she didn’t say a word. After I said
hello a really nice guy named Rick Wilson told me I had won an all
expenses paid hunting trip to Alabama to hunt with him and the Mossy
Oak Staff and that if I got a deer on camera it would probably are on
their TV show. I have to admit I was a little skeptical at first and
had to raise the question, “What’s the catch?” Mr. Wilson told me that
they would fly me down to Alabama and set me up at the lodge with some
Mossy Oak Camouflage and provide me with a room at the lodge we were
staying in and everything else I could have asked for. Then Mr. Wilson
said there was a problem. I was a minor, and he wasn’t sure if I could
accept the prize or not. It turned out that I could bring a legal
guardian along with me because the hunt I had won was for two people
anyway.
He also told me that he
had called the night before and talked to my mom about me winning the
hunt and not being sure if I could accept the prize. This is why my
mom asked if I had ever seen Mossy Oak’s TV show, but not wanting to
get my hopes up she didn’t tell me why she had asked that question.
The first person I called
was my dad because he was the one going with me. I told him everything
about the hunt and how I had won it and he just answered back with
sarcastic remarks. He thought I was just joking with him and making
everything up. I insisted I wasn’t joking but he still didn’t really
believe it until later when I showed him the article in North American
Hunter magazine a few months later where it showed my name next to the
grand prize hunt.
About 7 months later I got
another call from Mr. Wilson with more information on where the hunt
would be and how everything would work out. We called back and forth
over the next month or two planning the trip and telling each other
hunting stories.
Finally, after what seemed
like ages, I was on my way to the airport with my bags packed and
ready to go hunting. This is when the reality of it finally struck us
that we were really going to go on the hunt. We met up with Rick
Wilson in Atlanta, Georgia and flew together to Columbus, Mississippi.
We were there. We finally made it!
My dad and I stepped off
the airplane in Columbus and looked at each other and grinned wider
than we have ever grinned before. Here we met up with Justin Flaherty
from Mossy Oak. He drove us to the Lee Haven. Lee Haven is an old
plantation house in Alabama that was built by General Robert E. Lee’s
brother Edward. We later found out by word and experience that Edward
and his granddaughter Bessie haunted the place. Bessie raised
Dalmatians at Lee Haven until two of them turned on her and killed
her. This little twist in the hunt just added to the growing
excitement.
The first day was my day
with the cameraman (Justin Flaherty), it was a three-day hunt and
there was only one cameraman. That morning I was set up in a saddle
between a creek and a little pond. We were sitting there awhile when I
noticed a flock of cardinals. This was a good sign because my high
school mascot was a cardinal. We didn’t see any deer that morning, so
we headed back to the lodge for some lunch and to set up the game plan
for the evening hunt.
Walt Simmons, one of our
guides, drove Justin and me out to a Biologic field they named as the
Honeyhole, and for good reason. There he showed me the old hog trap
that I would be sitting in as a blind. It was really cool - there was
no way that the deer were going to see me in there but I could see
them perfectly. We were sitting there about an hour when I noticed a
doe coming to the field to feed right across from were I was sitting.
I was watching her for a while and noticed she kept on looking over
towards the far corner of the field. I followed her gaze and spotted a
much bigger deer making its way into the field. I took out my
binoculars and spotted it was a nice buck - an 8 pointer. He was out
there about 175 yards and was feeding his way towards us. He had no
idea we were there and the wind was in our favor so we let him work
his way in closer for a while.
The longer I sat there the
calmer my nerves became, by the time I was ready to take the shot I
was no longer shaking. I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to take him
soon. I put my crosshairs behind the shoulder, clicked off the safety
and slowly applied pressure to the trigger. BANG!!! He ran 50
yards and went down.
 We
decided to wait until my dad and Mr. Wilson came to pick up to
retrieve the deer. While we were waiting a pair of hogs came in the
field. At Lee Haven they have a really big problem with hogs, you
couldn’t find an area of the woods that the hogs haven’t ripped up
while feeding. Justin told me that I should take one. I pulled up my
rifle put the crosshairs behind the shoulder and squeezed. BANG!!! In
a matter of minutes I got my first buck and my first hog.
We sent word back to camp
that I had shot a doe. When dad and Mr. Wilson came upon the field
they saw Justin and me waiting for them with big grins. We told them
to follow us and led them to where we saw it go down and sure enough,
there laid my first buck. There was a huge feeling of accomplishment
all around. Not that a doe wouldn’t have been great – but a buck – and
what a buck!
We had everything going
just right. As Mr. Wilson said, “God provided us with great weather,
great hospitality, great food, great hunting, and no haunting.” What
more could I ask for. I got my first buck - a nice 8 pointer. The
whole hunt was recorded on videotape for a Mossy Oak TV show. The
meat from my deer and hog were used to feed over 200 nutritious meals
to people who needed it. Justin even took us on a visit to the Mossy
Oak TV Production Center and the Mossy Oak Shopping Mall. Wow…it truly
was my hunt of a lifetime. I guess the impossible is possible.
Josh Rabska | 
