CHATSWORTH, Ga. -- Gary Jackson had just about given up on landing a prize set of antlers Friday morning. The early morning chill hadn't fazed him, but the rain that had begun to fall would make the road too slick for his wheelchair to get traction.
He stood up out of his wheelchair on his lone leg and hopped to the front of his truck.
Just then, an eight-point buck meandered onto the roadway 70 yards away. Jackson leaned against his truck, took aim and fired the lethal lead into the buck's side.
"Ninety percent of it is up here," said Jackson, of Calhoun, Ga., tapping his head 20 minutes after felling the deer. Jackson, who lost his left leg in a motorcycle accident in 2003, joined six other hunters in wheelchairs this weekend at Carters Lake Wildlife Management Area. The event, which staff said has been going on for at least 11 years, gives hunters with disabilities a chance to enjoy their hobby.
"It's tough [for people with disabilities] to get out in the woods," said Larry Etheridge, a wildlife technician with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, which co-hosted the event with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. "Anything they need we try to help them with."
And it's much appreciated by outdoorsmen like Jackson, who said he looks forward to the hunt all year.
"I ain't quitting," said Jackson. "If I lost the other one I'd figure out how to get out there."
Participants are allowed to hunt in the camping areas around the lake, which were closed to recreational use on Halloween. The camping area includes paved roads and level, gravel campsites where the hunters can wait for prey. Staff members are on call to help retrieve any deer that wander off or fall down the steep banks after being shot.
"They do whatever they can to get us where we want to go," said Nick Smith, a hunter from Chatsworth, Ga., whose legs are paralyzed. Smith hunts from the window of his pickup truck and from an electric golf cart. He ties a rope around the cart's roof supports to serve as a rifle rest to help him aim.
Despite his challenges, Smith's complaints are the same as those of any other deer hunter.
"Should have brought my pellet gun," he said, eyeing the woods Friday. "You go deer hunting, you see squirrels; you go squirrel hunting, you see deer."
Jackson, who went turkey hunting for the first time last year, said most hunts can be adapted to be more accessible with a little bit of ingenuity and planning.
"About 90 percent of it, you could figure out a way," he said.
Paul Molla, park ranger with the corps at Carters Lake, said hunters have been very innovative in the past.
One year a hunter who could not use his hands had an electric turret on the front of his wheelchair that he aimed by blowing into a straw, Molla remembered. Another used an electronic scissor lift to hoist himself up into a makeshift deer stand.
"There's some technology that enables guys to hunt that you would never have thought would have the opportunity," he said.