Posted on 10/04/2007 8:33:48 AM PDT by ButThreeLeftsDo
The explosion put a hole in James Vandenheuvel's skull the size of a soup-can lid. The Iraqi roadside bomb also shattered the Minnesota National Guardsman's femur and tore away part of his right calf.
The insurgent attack Feb. 12, 2004, on a desolate road near Abu Ghraib prison killed another soldier and left Vandenheuvel a shattered man - temporarily.
On Wednesday, the Saginaw, Minn., resident partook in a time-honored Minnesota tradition - deer hunting - and killed a nine-point buck.
Meet Minnesota's latest generation of outdoorsy veterans - young, embraced by supporters and a medical miracle.
Vandenheuvel, 27, was among a handful of injured Iraq veterans participating Wednesday in the annual Disabled American Veterans Deer Hunt at Camp Ripley, a wooded military training facility near Little Falls. The rifle hunt is sponsored by the Veterans Administration Medical Center in St. Cloud and continues today.
This year, Minnesota is making an all-out push to get returning soldiers like Vandenheuvel who served in Iraq and Afghanistan back to a normal life through hunting.
Today is also the final day of a new archery deer hunt at Camp Ripley for noninjured, recently deployed soldiers. Fifty-nine vets participated.
One of them, Jason Rehn, 32, of Hinckley, didn't get a deer Wednesday morning. "But it's not really about getting a deer, either," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at twincities.com ...
one for your midwest outdoors ping.
If you’d like to be on or off this Upper outdoors/rural list please FR mail me. And ping me is you see articles of interest.
We hosted a bunch of these kids at my gun club a while back for an afternoon of shooting. Great bunch... everyone had a good time.
wounded warrior ping
BUMP
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1906530/posts
the orders of 1,161 other Minnesota guard members, were written for 729 days. Had they been written for 730 days — one day more — the soldiers would receive those benefits to pay for school.
“Which would be allowing the soldiers an extra $500 to $800 a month,”
Please help keep focus on what the bean counters in the Pentagon are doing to GIs
W
Thanks for the ping Grammy. I am on the road, in a motel on the way back from Louisiana.
Tomorrow night the Wounded Warrior Project’s Outdoor Program will receive an award at the Southeastern Outdoor Press Association banquet. I am very proud of that, since I signed the WWP Outdoor Project up as a supporting member of SEOPA, and worked with the WWP on launching the Outdoor Program. It’s a wonderful program.
Hopefully, the outdoor manufacturing industry will take notice.
I’ll call you when I get home Grammy, about our upcoming fishing trip in middle Tennessee.
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