Brokeback Bowhunter

The Fall

I couldn’t believe it when I got the news. My friend Heath fell out of a tree stand, one that I installed. I put the climbing pegs in myself, ratcheted the tree stand to the trunk, and attached a rope with prusik knots that made it possible to go from the ground to the stand and back down again while being tied off the entire time. Did one of my safeties fail?

Standing in front of him laid out on a gurney in emergency, not sure if he’d ever walk again, I just shook my head, and asked, “Heath… what happened?”

Heath had a hunting tag that was valid for an antlerless moose on a piece of property positively teeming with swamp donkeys. You have to enter a lottery for this tag, and it takes three or four years to get it. He’d decided to forego the bow that morning and take a rifle out. November 29 was his last day he was available to hunt, and he had visions of moose meat wrapped in butcher paper. Personally, I’m a stick and string guy all the way, so I thought this was the first bad decision. Meat tastes better when you use an arrow to harvest it.

Even worse, he didn’t sight in the rifle, and he hadn’t even fired it in years. I happened to know he’s moved several times in that interval, and that gun has been jostled and bumped like a checked bag. He had a better chance of hitting a moose with a paper airplane.

Pointless as his efforts were, he’d gotten to the hunting grounds early in the morning and struck off on the freshest moose tracks that he could find, slowly working around the section in hopes of bumping into his quarry. Not a bad plan with a (sighted) rifle in hand. In his travels, he found a shed from a bull, that is, an antler that fell off naturally in the winter of the previous year. When hunting bull moose, we sometimes clash these sheds together or rub them against trees and shrubs to mimic the sounds of bull moose thrashing around. The sound is a challenge to other bull moose, and it will bring them in pissed as a bear. It’s a great bow hunting tactic.

Heath decided we should keep this shed, but he didn’t want to carry it around. Then he thought of stashing it in one of the tree stands on the property. He carried out this plan despite not having his fall arrest harness with him. And it’s not as though he doesn’t understand the folly of scaling tall structures without safety restraints. The dude’s been a scaffolder for decades, and he could quote you the OSHA requirements for working at heights verbatim.

Nevertheless, not only did he free-solo the tree, but he also decided to sit for a while when he got up there. After all, the stand is there because many deer and moose frequent that spot. This is not a great plan either as it gives you time to acclimate and forget that you’re at a dangerous height.

While he was climbing up and transitioning from the climbing pegs to the seat of the stand, he snagged the rifle that was slung across his back on a neighboring tree. When he decided to descend, he thought he’d turn to the right, instead of the left, of the tree, hoping to avoid the same snag. In doing that, he had to put his foot on the branch of that neighboring tree and trust his weight to it before transitioning to the climbing pegs.

Heath described this branch as “good and sturdy,” however, the trees in this area are relatively small Trembling Aspen. Branches thick as your wrist break off with little effort, and the branch he chose was not prepared for 250 pounds of Heath Kai. He blew right through it and plummeted to the ground.

Can I admit something shameful? I found out Heath fell from a tree stand that I installed, and that he might be paralyzed at about 1:30 in the afternoon, and I didn’t hear this story until about 6 p.m. For safety’s sake, I only put stands in locations where I have cell coverage, so once he fell, Heath was able to call a couple friends and eventually 911. I called 911 as well to be sure they could get a fix on him, and to give them directions. They were able to ping his cell and get an exact location, but it’s half a mile into the bush with no trails leading to it.

I gave the dispatcher directions that included landmarks, precise distances, elevations, and trees I’d flagged with tape as markers. I made her promise she’d get the information to the responders, and after that it was just a waiting game. He was able to text me as he stayed on the line with his own dispatcher, so I knew that a ground crew found him and a helicopter lifted him out. But I never knew how he fell in the first place.

For the hours in between, I wondered how the safety straps could have failed. I wondered if the rope I’d strung from the ground to stand had snapped. I wondered what I had done to cause this fall, and I was absolutely sick about it. I mean, I tortured myself. And though I was beyond sad to see Heath in that state, I felt a huge knot in my stomach unclench when I learned I wasn’t responsible for it.

The Usual Suspects

When I figured he must have reached a hospital, I sent Heath this text:

I alerted all our friends that he was at Foothills Medical Center, and it wasn’t long before a few of us arrived. Now, at this point, I need to explain that all my close friends have nicknames I’ve given them, and I cannot tell a story without using those names instead of proper names because it just doesn’t sound realistic in my head.

The principal characters from here on out are Poops, Many-Vans (Many for short), and Dancing Bear (DB for short).

Poops got his moniker by being the perennial turd in the punchbowl in our group chats, where he poo-poos ideas all the time. 

Many-Vans got his name because he owns a veritable fleet of $800 Dodge Caravans, and he is always on the prowl for another one.

Dancing Bear or DB is actually Heath’s name, as you can see by his name in the text above. I call him that because of his body type—he is clearly built on the chassis of a bear—but also sings and dances like a Broadway star (well… prior to Nov. 29 of 2023, anyway).

Brothers

I was first to arrive at the hospital, and I heard Heath before I saw him, which is typical, so I took it as a good sign. I’ve never met an individual who makes as much noise as Heath Kai. Purposeful, incidental, he does it all, and he does it loud. On a possibly related note, seven years into bow hunting, he has yet to close the deal.

I walked up to the area marked A11 and looked in the curtain. He was laid out flat with rolled up towels bracing the sides of his head. That didn’t look promising.

“Here he is,” Heath said to the nurse, as I entered. “This is my brother.”

When you’re hurt badly enough, they tend to limit guests to immediate family, and Heath was plenty hurt. But we’re both bald white dudes, and the height and age difference is negligible. We’ve been mistaken for each other a time or two, so I think the nurse believed him.

Heath told me what led to the fall, and the current assessment of the damage. He had multiple fractures in most of his ribs, he’d shattered a vertebrae (T12), and though he could feel and move his feet, he wouldn’t be out of the woods for paralysis until the dust settled on the spinal surgery looming before him.

He let me gently put a hand on his chest to feel the state of his ribs. They were like broken candy canes still in the plastic sheathe, holding their form as his chest rose and fell, but grating and grinding the busted ends. Painkillers were taking the edge off, but he cried out in agony at every cough or laugh.

Poops was next on the scene. The nurse looked a bit put out at the prospect of another visitor, but then Heath said, “This… is my brother.” Poops isn’t bald, but he is another white dude who’s less than 6 feet, yet well north of 200 pounds, so it’s no stretch that the three of us could be brothers. I actually think it was the Dancing Bear’s vehemence that drew suspicion.

The wheels fell off when Many-Vans walked in. Many-Vans is 6’2” and weighs 163 pounds in a wet towel. Put all four of us in a row, and you’ve got three love seats and a lamp. He’s also classically handsome, so the plausibility of blood relations is a real stretch. He popped in through the curtain, the nurse took one look at him, and we knew the jig was up.

Heath said, “This—”

“Let me guess,” the nurse broke in, “he’s your brother.”

“This is my brother!” Heath proclaimed.

The nurse just said, “Whatever. Only two brothers at a time.”

As the fellow hunter, I was the brother who remained, and Poops took the first shift in the waiting room. Poops and Many spelled each other a couple times, and the nurse continued to go in and out, but this is where our relationship with the staff went south. It wasn’t just the fable of the three brothers, it’s that Many-Vans and I are trouble when mixed. Many has a quick and cutting wit about him, and his presence tends to bring out the same in me.

In our defense, Many did ask a clarifying question after he heard Heath’s story. It went something like this: “Just to be clear: We are already making fun of you for doing this to yourself, right?” Heath was fully on side with it and made several self-deprecating remarks about his actions leading to the hospital gurney. Notwithstanding, there are some folks, e.g., ER nurses, who’d say we took it too far.

There were many jokes, a lot of mockery, and an abundance of cavalier remarks about death in general. I mentioned that most of my tree stands are 10 feet higher than the one he fell from, and he’d be dead on arrival if he’d picked one of those. And Many-Vans pointed out that we were in the middle of a warm spell, and he’d have frozen to death in about 30 minutes most other years. But it seemed to be the speculation about paralysis and colostomy bags that pushed the nurse over the edge.

Many-Vans said, “Think of all the time you’ll save if you’re poopin’ in a bag for the rest of your life.”

“True,” I said. “The diverticulitis has you sittin’ on the john… what… 90 minutes a day, you think? You could… learn a second language.”

“He could get a degree,” Many said.

“He could even read the instructions on his fall arrest harness,” I added.

“Who needs that?” Many said.

“Uh, right,” DB said. “Like I haven’t spent more time wearin’ fall arrest than the two of you put together.”

“Guess you should have spent some time wearin’ it today,” I said.

At that last remark, the nurse left the room muttering, “There’s something wrong with you people.” We laughed at the genius of our own wit and her offence at it, and the only real drawback was that when Heath laughed, his chest hurt so badly that it was a laugh and a cry at the same time.

Fingers in the Bum

Here’s something I didn’t know, if you go ahead and break certain thoracic vertebrae, there are some important wires in there that control your peristalsis. These are the wave-like undulations of your intestines that help you poop. While we don’t talk about it much, poopin’ is one of the fundamental life functions: excretion. Not poopin’ is exactly as fatal as not breathing, you just die in weeks instead of minutes. Because you can live without walking, but not without poopin’, the higher priority is poopin’.

So, in walks this doctor who is… I don’t know the resident poopologist, or something, and he tells Heath, me, and Many-Vans about this need to assess Heath’s ability to poop. He didn’t demand that the Dancing Bear hunch up and make a poop right there on the bed, but his instructions were no less grim.

At this point, I feel the need to specify Dr. Poop is an Indian immigrant. This may not be germane to his message, but his accent is very strong, and when paired with his doctor’s attire, his deadpan delivery while repeatedly saying words like “bum” and “pooping,” created a significant, if unintended, comedic effect.

“Mr. Kai, there is a very serious issue that we must discuss,” Dr. Poop began. “Since your injury, have you had a poop?”

“No.”

Dr. Poop sighed audibly. “Then I am afraid there is a test that we must perform, and you are not going to like it. If there is an injury to the nerves that help you poop, we must perform a surgery right away, even before you have your vertebrae repaired.”

“Okay, hit me with it,” Heath said.

“What I must do is take these two fingers,” he said, brandishing the very fingers, “and stick them into your bum. When my fingers are in your bum, I will ask you to squeeze. If you cannot squeeze my fingers with your bum, we must do the surgery right away.”

“Got it,” Heath said.

“You will not like this one little bit,” Dr. Poop warned.

“Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, here,” Many-Vans interjected.

“Pardon me?” Dr. Poop said, looking at Many-Vans.

“I’m just sayin’,” Many-Vans went on, “not one little bit? I mean, the man is obsessed with rectal exams.”

“It’s true,” I confirmed. “You wouldn’t believe how much he talks about them.”

Dr. Poop gave us a bewildered look, “Be that as it may,” he said, turning back to Heath, “rolling you over will be painful. I am sorry, but we must do this.”

“Wait a second,” Heath said. “They’re tellin’ me not to even move my head cuz they’re worried about my spine, but you want to roll me over?”

“I know, and we will be as careful as we can, but it does not matter,” Dr. Poop said. “If you cannot poop, you cannot live, so this must be the priority.”

As if on cue, nurses popped up out of nowhere and began prepping Heath for the roll. The Bear groaned in anticipation of the pain to come.

“We’ll be right here, buddy,” Many-Vans said.

But Heath’s primary nurse was there, and she’d had more than enough of our jackassery.

“Oh, no, you won’t!” she said. “You two! Out! You are not staying here for this!” she pointed emphatically lest we not get the picture.

“Yeah, we probably deserve that,” Many said. “We’ll be right on the other side of this curtain.” We paused to see if that was going to fly. The nurse said nothing, so we were allowed to stand there within arms reach of Heath, just on the opposite side of a curtain.

“Well,” Many said to me, “here’s the moment he’s been waiting for.”

“Yeah, big moment for him,” I said.

A little context here. If there is ANY opportunity to talk about prostate exams, Heath is right in there (so to speak). If a dude heads off to the bathroom, even if it’s been eight hours since his last trip, even if beer and/or coffee has been consumed, you can count on an inquiry from Dancing Bear. “So, Adam… I see you’re headed to the bathroom again. Any… concerns there. Maybe need to go see if the ol’ prostate’s a little enlarged,” he’ll ask, raising his eyebrows coquettishly for emphasis. He does this with 100% reliability.

“So… is this bum thing his worst nightmare or a dream come true?” I asked.

“Hard to say,” Many said. “Maybe a bit of both?”

Then we heard this on the other side of the curtain.

“We are going to roll you over now,” Dr. Poop said. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah. Let’s go!” DB said, sounding like he was breaking the huddle in a big game.

Dr. Poop gave a countdown. “One. Two. Three!”

We heard the hospital bed rock and clank, and Heath cried out in agony. I’ve never heard someone in pain like that before. As much as we tease and poke fun, hearing him in that state was utterly heartbreaking. That said, the man rallied hard.

“All right, now the fingers in the bum,” Dr. Poop said. “Here we go!”

“Oh, yeah!” Heath yelled. “There it is!! Get ‘em in there!”

“Well,” I said, “definitely some wish-fulfillment mixed in with the nightmare.”

“Now, try to squeeze my fingers,” Dr. Poop said.

We heard a kind of humph out of Dancing Bear.

“Okay, good,” Dr. Poop said. “Excellent. I can feel you squeezing.”

“Gotta let him go, Heath!” Many called.

We heard them roll him back again, more clanking of the bed and piteous shrieks and whimpers. It was awful. When we came back around the curtain, Heath was pouring sweat from the exertion. The good doctor was gone. I’m not sure if he ducked behind another curtain or what, but quickly as he’d come, Dr. Poop had vanished like a fart in a storm.

Night Watch

Once it was determined that Heath’s bum could grab fingers, things really got rolling. Many-Vans swapped out for Poops (the brother, not the doctor), but a nurse showed up to take him in for surgery. She was the anesthetist, and she wanted some details: allergies to medication, cardiac history, that kind of thing. Then she asked for his weight.

“240,” Heath said.

The nurses pen hovered over the form.

Poops looked down at Heath’s body laid out on the gurney and gave three deliberate guffaws: “Huh. Huh. Huh.”

“What?” Heath said. “240. I weighed this morning. I was… I was between 240 and 245!”

“You do you, DB,” Poops said. “You do you.”

“Heath, we’re talking anesthesia here,” I said. “You wanna wake up with some cutter two knuckles deep in your spine?”

“I’m 245 today!” he said.

The nurse wrote it down and left. We did not even have a chance to comment on this exchange before they were rolling him out. In hospitals, it seems like you wait forever for something, but when it finally happens, you’re caught off guard. The transitions are jerky, no slow fades, just jump cuts.

I managed to ask how long it would be as they wheeled him off, but I just got a shrug and an, “I don’t know… several hours?”

And he was gone.

Poops and I drove out to retrieve his truck from the hunting grounds, a three and a half hour round trip when you include a much -needed stop for Buddy Burgers. But I made it even longer by insisting that we hike out to the stand. Yeah, it was around 10:30 at night by then, but I just had to see the place where he fell. There was a good moon that night, and we barely even used the headlamps we brought along.

We could see that the EMS crew had followed my instructions precisely, taking the perfect route to reach him, rather than a direct line from the road. We also found that “good and sturdy” branch the Dancing Bear had trusted his weight to. It’s broken end stood out plainly from the trunk, right at foot level on the right side of the stand.

I climbed up (wearing a fall arrest harness) and measured the exact height: 15’, 6”. I also sawed it off close to the trunk. Taking it down to the ground, I was able to pair it with the part that snapped off by matching the broken ends. The stick was thin as a broom handle, dry, and feather-light. Its fragility would be downright comical if Heath hadn’t trusted his life to it just hours ago. I gave him both pieces as a memento mori.

Heath was still in surgery when we got back. I stayed while my remaining brothers went home. It was 1:30 a.m. before he was out of recovery and I could go visit. True to form, I heard him before I saw him, and he was running the same “brother” routine on a brand new nurse.

She left us there, and Heath gave me the news. He’d managed to avoid paralysis, apparently your thoracic vertebrae are the best ones to break, in case you’re contemplating a spinal injury. They fused T10 through L2, five vertebrae forever joined by steel rods.

He said his back didn’t hurt, but his ribs were still in such pain that he couldn’t even lift his arms. He was thirsty, but water made him sick to his stomach, so I fed him ice chips. Bucket upon bucket of them. I must have given the dude a gallon of water that way over the next eight hours. He wolfed them like a slot machine gobbles coins, and he’d even beep and chirp if I slackened the pace.

They keep the lights low on the ward through the night watch. Perhaps it was my lack of sleep, but I felt like the whole night was a dream. I just fed him the chips and listened as he talked about all the people he would have to call, all the arrangements he’d have to make. Accidents like this are life changers. And while the Dancing Bear would soon be walking again, I imagined his arabesques were going to take a serious hit.

I was pointing his phone at his face to unlock it, and then sending texts and emails on his behalf, when he suddenly looked up at me and said, “Oh! You gotta go.”

“Go where?”

“You have to go get that moose.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“It’s the last day of the season.”

“I am abundantly aware of that. Thankfully, I’ve got it booked off, so I don’t need to go in.”

“So, go get that moose!”

“Dude, the sun’s up in, like, an hour. I’m late.”

“But you know you can get it if you go out there.”

“All right, that’s actually a big ol’ maybe, and I also haven’t slept since yesterday, and there’s also no one else here to feed you ice chips yet. So, you’re stuck with me here.”

Heath’s insistence that I go harvest his moose for him will come as no surprise to hunters or their kin. We have a fierce dedication to seeing tags filled, especially ones that only come around once every four years. But, as irreverent and inappropriate as my humor may be, there was no possibility that I was going to leave Heath there alone. Something you don’t realize about hospitals until you spend some time in one is that they are very lonely places if there’s no one visiting.

Heath had to miss the next hunting season. In fact, to this day, Heath has not been back in the game. He was still not able to walk on uneven ground when the 2024 season rolled around, and there’s plenty of that where we hunt. But with the 2025 season just days away, I’m hoping to get him out there again. I’ve got plenty of stands ready to go, all with game cameras telling me there’s no shortage of action, and all with fall protection systems in place from the ground up.