Step 24: Fill your deer tag.

On May 23, 2024, my husband, Jim Gallagher, entered the E.R. he worked in for 15 years, this time as a patient.  Within days he was fighting for his life as an infection that began in his foot raged throughout his body, and on June 4th, his leg was amputated below the knee in order to save his life.  This is an ongoing log of our journey.

Morning rituals, reinvented.

The light surprised me when my first “med” reminder went off Sunday morning. 

I had forgotten entirely that we were Falling Back on November 3rd, and it felt good—that little bit of light, the awareness that this was Sunday, and the delicious knowledge that I had slept a little longer.

Our “retired” mornings are not as harsh as the mad-dash working mornings, though they still are the busiest time of day for me.  There is coffee to make, exercise and stretches, journaling, my prayer time, all before Jim or the dogs are up.  I get the booties on the dogs so that they don’t thrash my newly refinished pine plank floors, get them pottied and fed, and pottied some more, keeping a sharp eye to make sure they are not eating “forest morsels” or chasing the deer or wild turkeys.  And then the med alarm turns my attention to Jim’s needs—more coffee, toast, meds, blood sugar, etc., and our morning family time where breakfast appears, we chat, and the dogs wallow blissfully on top of Jim.

Lately, though, med time includes a few new questions:

“Any deer out in the meadow?”

“Can you put my rifle by the window?”

“Would you open the window and put a pillow on the sill?”

It’s hunting season, the time when Oregonians don their camo and work a second job, which looks a lot like walking softly and warily in the woods, hiding in a blind, or cleaning rifles.  In the lobby after church, men stand in small groups, sharing photos and stories of their conquests or The One That Got Away.

The weekend that the Johns were here (see Step 23), Jon D wandered downstairs and in his soft voice calmly said, “Jim, there’s a buck larger than anything you have around here standing down there on your driveway.” 

We had been watching the does for a while.  They are so comfortable on our land that when I yell, “Hey, deer!” they just stop munching and look at the crazy woman.  But bucks are rare and sneaky and smart and jumpy.  It’s not until the chill hits the air and the rut begins that they lose a bit of their caution and begin following the ladies.

“Kathy, open the safe and get out the Legacy rifle,”  Jim said.

Thus began the porch-and-window hunting, with a glimpse of that beautiful buck. 

The nearly-naked hunt.

Since that sighting, morning rituals have expanded to include repeated requests from Jim to check out the window, particularly in the back meadow. This I do, reporting wildlife movement and occasionally whispering prayers that God will grant my house-bound, mobility-challenged, excellent marksman husband the chance to shoot a buck.

Jim is up earlier these days.  That’s when the deer action happens.  Wheeling himself to the window, he rests the Legacy rifle on the pillow, and waits.  Bands of wild turkeys wander through and pick at grain, or challenge each other, fluffing and flapping their giant wings at strangers.  The occasional doe stops by for a snack. 

Sunday morning held extra requests, besides the frequent “Anything out there?”

“I want my jeans and a button-down shirt and a warm, wet washcloth, and something to dry with.”  That’s Oregonian for “I want my Sunday best”. 

Jim rolled away from the window to get cleaned up, and the conversation went like this:

Jim: “Anything out there?”

Kathy, stepping up to look: “Nope.”

Jim: “Anything out there?”

Kathy: “Nope.”

Jim: “Anything out there?”

Kathy: “Nope.”

I left, then strolled into the room again, glanced outside and instantly ducked.

“Jim!  Big buck!  Big buck!  Stay down!”  I spoke softly but urgently.

This was not The Giant Buck, but a very nice 3 X 3 had strolled quietly into the feeding ground. 

We needn’t have stayed down; the buck turned away from us, giving Jim time to get into his chair and roll quietly to the window and softly ready his rifle--but not enough time to get his clothes on!  As he peered through the scope I held my breath and watched.  The deer, however, only showed us his rear-end, head down, feeding.

With my limited hunting experience, I was looking for a turn, a broadside shot to the kill zone, like we used to practice at archery tournaments.  But Jim knew waiting may mean this relaxed buck would spot or wind us.  The buck lifted and turned his head for a brief moment, exposing his neck, and Jim pulled the trigger of the Legacy.

For a moment I thought he had missed.  The buck ran! 

Jim, of course, could not roll down into the meadow in his wheelchair to finish the hunt, so I went to the meadow to look for evidence.  Had he hit the buck at all? 

I was stunned to find massive amounts of blood; surely a lethal shot.

Were all my readers the Field and Stream kind, I would share the interesting details of the kill that would likely gross out you Better Homes readers.  So if you want those intriguing details, Jim would be happy to retell the tale again and again!  I will spare my more sensitive readers and skip to this happy ending:

When Jim sent this photo to another of the Johns, he wrote back, “Wait, what?!  You shot a buck coming straight towards you in a wheelbarrow?  Way to go!”

A thread you must have noticed by now is that the story behind every story is nearly always that of the friends who stand in the gap when life throws you a curveball. I call them stretcher-bearers. 

“Just know,” said our neighbors shortly after Jim lost his leg, “that whenever you get a deer, we will come take care of it for you.”  It was these kind neighbors who put in the two-legged work of retrieving the Sunday buck and getting it ready for the butcher shop. 

The provision of delicious Oregon meat for our freezer is wonderful.  But not moreso than the ability for a man to just be a man, or the camaraderie and support we receive from our friends.

Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor.  For if one falls down, his companion can lift him up; but pity the one who falls without another to help him up!

Ecclesiastes 4:9-10

And a sweet P.S. about that Legacy rifle.

In his retirement, Jim’s Dad took to fixing, building and reburbishing guns.

George Gallagher loved putting in the time to make anything he did—Space Shuttles before his retirement, guns after—precision accurate.  While he lived with us, Jim admired the work Dad did on a 6.5 Creedmore rifle he built for his grandson, Luke.   Jim tried it out one day, finding it uncannily accurate, and shooting three bullets pretty much in the same hole.

“I like that Creedmore so much, I’m thinking of building one for myself,” Jim said to his Dad one day.  “What barrel should I put on it, Dad?”

Dad pointed him to a Lilja.  Repeatability is key in a barrel, and the Lilja is accurate, precise, and consistent.  So they found a 6.5 Creedmore Lilja in a shop in Montana, and soon it was on its way.

The rifle belonged to both of them, Father and Son, and the two poured the best of everything they could into it, working on it together, and discussing the advantages of each next step.

“Gotta have the barrel fluted,” Dad said, so they fluted the barrel.  Next they agreed that only a McMillan stock suited a rifle this fine.  Eventually the stock and barrel were taken to a gunsmith in Bend, the same one who had previously finished Luke’s rifle.  Once assembled, he would put a fine Ceracoat ceramic finish on the barrel and action.

“Anything you want written on this gun?” the gunsmith asked before finishing the coating on the rifle.  Father and son discussed the options.

“Dad, I want to give this to my own grandson someday, like the one you built for Luke,” Jim said.  “How about we put ‘6.5 Creedmore’ on one side, and on the other, ‘Legacy’?”

His Dad got to shoot the gun, though he never killed any game with it.  And a few days before Jim’s next birthday, Dad held the rifle out to Jim with that Irish twinkle in his eye.

“Happy birthday, Son,” he said.

Gramps is gone now, but his workmanship gleams whenever Jim pulls out the Legacy.  We imagine how he would smile and laugh if he heard about Jim’s Sunday hunt. 

But the other half of the Legacy is the grandson we didn’t know we would have, who is now on the way, and Jim tears up telling me the story of the Legacy gun, knowing that now there will be a grandson to receive it.

“I want anyone alive after I’m gone to be able to tell him this story,” Jim says.  “This was made by Grandpa and Great-Grandpa just for you.  You can harvest deer, antelope, anything else you want to shoot with it.” 

And now the tale of Jim’s nearly-naked shot out the bedroom window is also part of the Legacy rifle’s story.

“If I’m gone, you tell him, Grandma.  You were there,” he says.

. . . . . . . . .

So thankful you are NOT gone, my Love.  And so glad I was there to see this shot.

As for the rest of the story, let’s take it, as always…

One step at a time.