89-Year-Old Wisconsin Granny Bags Buck
Eighty-nine year old Delores Wilhelms opens the freezer in the barn adjacent to her home. Inside are neatly wrapped packages of venison.
The meat is from a 150 pound buck the game-hunting granny bagged while hunting with her neighbor, Ron Haessly.
Delores hadn’t been hunting in years. It was a pursuit she had enjoyed with her husband when he was still alive.
“It was a thrill,” she said.
She missed deer hunting. So, she and Ron hatched a plan to get her a buck using her husband’s retired crossbow.
“I set up a target twenty yards away and she shot six arrows,” Haessly said. “She had all three arrows within a three inch group.”
“Would you like to put an apple on your head?” she interrupted, looking at the reporter seated across from her at the kitchen table.
Having confirmed her ability to hit a target, Ron and Delores were soon in a blind on Ron’s 30 acre spread.
“The monitor went off,” Delores recalled as her eyes lit up. “I got my bow up and Ron said ‘don’t shake’ so I got it up and bingo!”
But, Delores Wilhelms’ is about much more than a single buck. This is an 89-year-old woman living life to the fullest. She hunts. She fishes. She makes wine out of berries. She enjoys it all, especially the great outdoors.
“Just to go north,” she said recounting what she loves so much. “Just to listen to the water running over the stones and spring, to see the first snowfall, just to go out fishing and get a bite.”
Delores has some advice for those missing out on such joys.
“Get off your butt,” she said. “And, enjoy what God gives you free.”
http://www.fdlreporter.com/article/20081022/FON0101/810220517/1985/FONent
