Blind Bowhunter Downs 200-Class Iowa Buck

This is such an incredible story from Peterson’s Bowhunting Magazine. It is worth the read.

“Left completely blind after a 2017 accident, Wisconsin’s Jeremiah Voigt scores the buck of a lifetime.

When news breaks about a 200-inch deer being taken by a crossbow hunter in the fabled, big-buck-rich Midwest, the story is often as much about the deer and the storied region as it is about the hunter.

But not in this instance — not in the case of a 200-inch plus bruiser buck from Iowa that fell to a disabled hunter late last week as he hunted in a cornfield blind with Big Buck Down Outfitters.

Last Thursday evening, the amazing tale of an unforgettable hunt began to wrap up, one that is every bit as much about the hunter — 45-year old Kaukauna, Wisc. resident Jeremiah Voigt — as it is about a world class animal or an incredible place to hunt in one of the whitetail world’s best deer camps.

Because while the phrase “walk by faith, not by sight” might be a Biblical truth that many first heard around a Sunday School flannel board or a church youth camp setting, late last week it also proved to be true in the whitetail woods thanks to one of the most amazing deer hunting stories that the 2022 season is destined to produce.

The reason for that is because for Voigt, who has deer hunted since he was five or six years old when his father tied him into a makeshift treestand with a safety rope as they watched the sunrise unfold over the Badger State woods, the idea of walking by faith and not by sight is a daily reality. It’s an unexpected way of life in more ways than one.

After a lifetime of work, travel, hunting, and family, Voigt was nearly crushed to death in an unfortunate accident back in 2017 when a work truck came down on him during a parking lot repair effort in Wisconsin. Just hours after he had returned from helping a friend pursue a once-in-a-lifetime desert bighorn sheep with a governor’s tag out west, Voigt suddenly ended up in a hospital fighting for his life and facing a new reality going forward.

“I own a concrete company and was on my way up to northern Wisconsin,” said Voigt. “The truck had some mechanical problems with the drive shaft and transfer case. It was rattling pretty bad, so I pulled into an O’Reilly’s to get some wrenches and go to work on it.”

Moments later, a desperate rescue attempt was underway to free the man pinned under a huge truck after it rolled back a bit into a depression as Voigt worked underneath it. In a brief moment, everything changed for the hunter as the weight of the rig settled down onto his body with sudden and brutal force. He was critically injured and most of his facial bones were crushed, along with his lower jaw being broken, an arm busted, both collarbones broken, a vertebrae in his back crushed, all of his ribs broken, and his sternum split.

Voigt would spend several days in a medically induced coma, then weeks spent healing and rehabbing, and it would be a month plus before he would leave the hospital. He’s a real miracle man who is lucky to be alive.”

The full article can be found with this link.

Photo credit: Original author

 

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