Great-Grandmother, 80, Bags First Deer
AP
HENDERSON, Ky. (Jan. 1) - Gladys Schaefer likes to get things done. The 80-year-old western Kentucky great-grandmother followed that mantra in her first outing as a deer hunter. She bagged a doe within 30 minutes in late November. "Don't stop doing things 'til you're in the grave!" Schaefer says.
She's a mother of four, grandmother of eight and great-grandmother of seven who loves boating, plays golf three or four times a week and is getting ready for a trip to Las Vegas.
"She's a totally amazing woman," said Mark Lynn, her son-in-law.
Her grandson-in-law, Christopher Connell and Lynn took Schaefer out for the Nov. 20 hunt. They picked her up the day before to take her out for some target practice. She said she hadn't fired a gun since her teens, but she hadn't forgotten a thing. She did well with a rifle mounted on a tripod, and the trio retired to a trailer for the night.
The thermometer dropped to 24 degrees that evening, but Schaefer said she fared just fine. By 6 a.m. the next day, she was in a blind at the foot of a tree where Connell served as deer spotter and relayed information to her and Lynn over a walkie-talkie.
Within minutes, a doe came within 50 or 60 yards of the blind, and she fired a shot.
"Ka-powie! I let it go! I thought my heart would beat right out of my chest. I was so excited," she said.
Schaefer, a breast-cancer survivor who lost her husband of 54 years last August, praises her family for supporting her notions and "being so wonderful to me."
"She just wants to do whatever she's big enough to do," Connell said. "I love her to death. She's a great sport, fun and fun-loving."
Now Schaefer is happily distributing to friends the many pounds of sausage from the deer, and she's looking forward to another hunt in 2007.
She's a mother of four, grandmother of eight and great-grandmother of seven who loves boating, plays golf three or four times a week and is getting ready for a trip to Las Vegas.
"She's a totally amazing woman," said Mark Lynn, her son-in-law.
Her grandson-in-law, Christopher Connell and Lynn took Schaefer out for the Nov. 20 hunt. They picked her up the day before to take her out for some target practice. She said she hadn't fired a gun since her teens, but she hadn't forgotten a thing. She did well with a rifle mounted on a tripod, and the trio retired to a trailer for the night.
The thermometer dropped to 24 degrees that evening, but Schaefer said she fared just fine. By 6 a.m. the next day, she was in a blind at the foot of a tree where Connell served as deer spotter and relayed information to her and Lynn over a walkie-talkie.
Within minutes, a doe came within 50 or 60 yards of the blind, and she fired a shot.
"Ka-powie! I let it go! I thought my heart would beat right out of my chest. I was so excited," she said.
Schaefer, a breast-cancer survivor who lost her husband of 54 years last August, praises her family for supporting her notions and "being so wonderful to me."
"She just wants to do whatever she's big enough to do," Connell said. "I love her to death. She's a great sport, fun and fun-loving."
Now Schaefer is happily distributing to friends the many pounds of sausage from the deer, and she's looking forward to another hunt in 2007.
I've never been to Henderson, which is only about two hours from here, but I think I might have to plan a roadtrip there and stop by and meet Gladys Schaefer. She is my kinda woman. I think we all should do whatever we're big enough to do. I'm going to do some Googling and see if I can get in touch with Gladys, and see if she's going to be in Vegas when Diva Stacy and I go in three weeks. We sure would love to hook up with her. But I'm not sure we could keep up with her.
5 comments:
My six year old grandson, told us he was on a youth hunt Saturday, if his daddy would have let him shoot (the deer was so length away) he thinks he could have gotten a spine shot........
some little hunter....lol
I'll bet Gladys would just love Krispy Kremes and an icy cold Bud Light for a late morning snack in Vegas!
I bet she'd even buy the first round!!
I am once again deeply saddened by the level to which the mainstream killing/death/murdering/meat eating machine will go to to make it seem as though women and more especially mothers can possibly be empowered by dominating another who is unable to defend itself and taking it's life away as a kind of entertainment. Is it so empowering to enslave others?...to dominate over the weak?...must we continue this cycle of oppression? As women we should know better than any other what it means to be looked at as a worthless commodity. Can't we ask ourselves, if we are able to look at a dear as a disposable object, than why not an african as the Europeans did when they brought slaves over to this country?; they were able to degrade them, to see them as this grandmother sees the deer so that they could justify killing and enslaving them. The deer can hear, smell, taste, love and live just as we can. Is it so beyond our ability to evolve and understand that the deer might have more wisdom to share and communicate with us alive rather than as a piece of meat? Please consider going vegetarian or vegan and stop the cycle of violence...do your part. thank you
Although some humans behave much worse than animals, please do not compare the life of a cow, pig, or deer to that of a human being. While I respect your opinion, I believe certain animals are here for a purpose, to provide a food source. Certainly people shouldn't kill any creature just for the sake of killing, but would the human race have survived history without using the meat of animals to sustain over the long winters while there were no crops..... and Heaven forbid, no health food stores? And what about God's great predators? Lions, tigers, crocodiles? What would become of them without the livestock they consume? The food chain clearly shows us that certain animals are here for consumption, like it or not.
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