Enabled Hunting

BY SAVANNA SIMMONS

When Austin Jones was a baby, his mother Stephanie knew something wasn’t quite right with her youngest child. His hands and feet didn’t develop as she knew they should have, and, at the age of nine months, he was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy. For several years of his life, he was able to walk with the aid of braces, however, when he was six, Austin went into respiratory failure. Since then, he has been on a ventilator and in a wheelchair.

At the age of 6, Austin Jones went into respiratory failure. He was able to leave the hospital more than a month later, though he has been on a ventilator since. Courtesy photos.

Following the passion of his hunting father, for his sixth birthday, Austin took his birthday money of$168 and purchased a Cricket .22 rifle, an upgradefrom his BB gun.

“That was the only thing he wanted,” said Austin’s dad Jason. “He still loves to shoot guns, but he just won’t hunt with guns because he thinks they’re too easy.”

He got his first crossbow at the age of 12, and Austin and Jason took quite some time to get a system figured out for shooting. Jason places the crossbow near Austin in his track chair and directs the aim as Austin looks through the scope, telling Jason, up, down, your way, my way, and shoot. Jason pulls the trigger with his left thumb.

“We were really, really bad for quite a while. If we got a 10-inch group, we were pretty proud of it,” Jason said. “Part of it was we didn’t have a real great crossbow, and part of it was we just sucked.”

Now, at the age of 23, Austin is an avid crossbow hunter, and roams the United States with his dad, hunting large game like white tail and pronghorn in Wyoming, black bear and Rocky Mountain elk in his home state of Michigan, American bison in Texas, coues deer in Arizona, and much more.

He has also captured two world championship titles, one through International Bowhunters (IBO) Association and one through Archery Shooters Association (ASA) and one national title in IBO archery competitions.

“We went to his first national shoot in August of 2015, and there he placed second at world championship. Then the following year, he really buckled down, and we practiced shooting together,” Jason said. “His second year, he competed in all the shoots that year, and he won the triple crown, which is their national championship. He won two out of the three shoots for the triple crown, then he won the world championship.”

In 2017, he had hoped to shoot in the able-bodied crossbow class through IBO, though they didn’t allow it, so Jason reached out to ASA asking if Austin could compete in their regular classes, which they allowed.

“The whole second year in ASA was a series of ups and downs, just the trials and tribulations that make you who you are, and, all year long, after every shoot when we didn’t win, Austin would say, ‘That’s ok,’” Jason said. “Everything lined up at the Classic, the biggest 3D archery shoot in the world. There were well over 2,000 competitors in different classes, and that weekend Austin was the best crossbow shooter out of all of them. He wound up leading from wire to wire, from the very first arrow to the last arrow.”

While Austin has been successful in and enjoys archery tournaments, his true passion is hunting free-range game. Austin, with his dad at the wheel, has been able to hunt the remote areas he has due to the generosity of others.

For most of his life, Austin used a motorized wheelchair, but the terrain he traversed was often limited, especially in his marshy, soft-soiled home state. One weekend, Jason and Austin met Ray Brown, a man with late onset muscular dystrophy, at the Woods and Water Show in Michigan. He encouraged Austin to be part of his non-profit Wheeling Team 457 and showed them his Action Trackchair.

“We were like, ‘Wow’, but we knew there was no way that we would be able to afford one like it,” Jason said. “My sister started a fundraiser, which was something, at that point, I never would have even thought of doing because of my foolish pride. Since then, I’ve learned a lot.”

The fundraiser started with modest donations coming in, but one evening, Jason’s sister called crying hysterically.

“I thought the worst, but someone donated $10,000 toward his track chair, so we were able to get it in 2013,” Jason said. “Since then, it’s just been a whirlwind of adventures. We’ve been to 38 states, hunted in 13 states, and he’s taken six big game species.”

In 2014, at the Deer and Turkey Spectacular in Madison, Wisconsin, they met a group Outdoor Adventures for the Physically Challenged. They organized an antelope hunt in Wyoming, but Austin nearly declined since it was set

up as a rifle hunt. They were able to jump through hoops at the last minute in order to allow Austin to legally hunt with his crossbow.

“It was going to be over irrigation pivots, and a relatively easy hunt for the most part because they had dealt with disabled people, but when we got there Austin had these other ideas,” Jason said. “He wanted to try to use these decoys and stalk some antelope. The one guy thought he was absolutely crazy, and the other guy believed in Austin.”

On the first day, they glassed a herd of eight does and a buck at 285 yards away, and Austin wanted to give it a go. They covered Austin and his crossbow with decoys, and over the next two hours, they stalked the herd 350 yards to the edge of the field. Twice, they got to within 35 yards, but the buck never presented a good shot.

“The herd got to the edge of the field to the sage brush. There was no way we could have stalked them through that, so I looked at Austin and said, ‘What do you want to do?’ He said, ‘Let’s go.’ We closed the distance a little bit—his track chair isn’t very fast—and he ranged them, 54 yards,” Jason said. “Austin adjusted his aim a little bit, then said, ‘Shoot.’ Austin said he could see his Luminok on the end of his arrow all the way through the scope, then he looked at me and said, ‘I think I heart-shot it!’”

For Austin, the joy of the hunt is less about the kill and more about the stalk and the challenge. His high standards for himself means that he waits for a clean shot with a likely kill rather than a wound. He doesn’t hunt beyond designated areas or hours, and he prefers free-range game that presents a fair hunt.

“Every time my arrow passes through an animal or we come across a dead critter at the end of a bloody trail, an overwhelming sadness comes over me, followed by joy and happiness,” Austin said. “Hunting is more than just killing, it’s about the spiritual side of things, the feeling you get from being in the woods, the love of nature and being a part of the largest conservationists this world has ever seen.”

On top of being the star of the hunting videos that frequent their Jones Boys Hunting Squad Facebook page, Austin also edits all his those videos with just his two thumbs.