Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
The buck stops here
Hunter off to fast start for deer season
Deer season didn’t start with a bang for Steve Swope. It was more like a click when Swope fired his crossbow and bagged a fine 8-point buck.
Swope didn’t waste a day bringing home the venison. He shot the deer on Sept. 23, the day after Arkansas’ archery deer season opened.
It’s a buck Swope and his wife, Jackie, admired after the hunter put it on the ground with a 30-yard shot. Swope would draw the admiration of any hunter considering he has ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. That doesn’t keep the 48-year-old from hunting deer or living a full life.
When the woods beckon each fall, Swope rolls into the forest in an all-terrain chair that looks like a one-person track hoe. He can’t move his body much below his chin. Swope shoots his crossbow by biting a trigger that releases the arrow, or bolt, as it’s called in the world of crossbows.
Jackie is Swope’s hunting companion, helping her husband get situated in the ground blind near their home on several rolling acres in east Benton County. She was in the blind when the moment of truth arrived and Swope fired.
The hunter squints his eyes as a signal to Jackie that he’s ready to shoot. Jackie releases the crossbow’s safety. Swope bites down on a trigger near his mouth, then swoosh. Another deer for the family table.
“He gets a doe about every year,” Jackie said, sitting with Swope on their front porch a couple days after he killed the buck. It sure isn’t his first. Taxidermy mounts of several impressive bucks adorn the couple’s living room.
On Sept. 23, “We were sitting in the blind, and the buck came from behind to the left. He came up beside us literally five feet away,” Jackie said.
Swope kept his cool watching the buck angle to the front of the blind. There’s some limited up and down adjustment with the crossbow that’s mounted to Swope’s chair, but little side to side. He gave the signal. Jackie released the safety and Swope took the buck.
Deer season is Swope’s time, but so is baseball season. He’s a big fan of Razorbacks baseball and is in Baum Stadium for the home games. This year the Swopes traveled to Omaha to watch the Hogs play in the College World Series. That dropped foul ball? It happened right in front of their seats.
When baseball is done, one might find the Swopes at a rodeo, another sport Steve loves. The family just got back from a Professional Bull Riders event in Missouri.
Swope can’t speak, but he’s a motivational speaker in his own way. He writes his talks on a computer that responds to his eye movements. His words are delivered at Swope’s appearances. In September, he was a guest at the Brits of the Ozarks car show that benefited ALS research. He’s a regular at other ALS events, said Jennifer Necessary, director of the Arkansas ALS Association chapter.
Necessary arranges a lot of those engagements.
“Sometimes I think I wear him out,” she said.
The meet and greets are something Swope dearly loves, Necessary added.
“The inspiration he provides is second to none. Truly, Steve and Jackie have decided to live life with ALS.”
Goals of the ALS Association are to keep people with ALS in their homes and living a full life, she confirmed.
It’d be tough for Swope to slip into the woods or cheer for the Hogs at Baum Stadium without Jackie.
“What she’s doing enabling Steve to hunt is so heart warming,” Necessary said.
Swope, an. Army veteran, was diagnosed with ALS 10 years ago.
Over time, everything is taken from them from the neck down, Necessary said.
Statewide, 125 people have ALS. Swope is the only one who hunts, she noted.
Swope’s mom, Alma Swope, lives next door and reaps the benefits of her son’s deer hunting. He shares the venison bounty. “Every bit of it,” she said. Steve is out there no matter what the weather.
“He likes the cold,” Alma Swope said. “I’ve seen him come back and his beard was frozen with ice. That kind of scared me.”
Hunters are allowed two bucks during deer season. No doubt Steve and Jackie are in the blind with an eye out for buck No. 2.