Great Outdoorsman

by Lori A. Wood

Chad Waligura has a mission to get people with spinal cord injury (SCI) back into the woods.

You might think the outdoors is no place for a person with a mobility impairment, unless you stick to the paven path. Chad Waligura would strongly disagree with you.

Chad was named the 2003 Challenged Hunter of the Year by Buckmasters and Streamlight. BADF Disabled Services and its presenting sponsor, Streamlight, issue the award to a person with a disability who has overcome great obstacles in order to participate in hunting and applies his or her insight to help and inspire others.

It’s not just Waligura’s talent for bagging birds and bigger game like antelope and deer that won him the award; he was also recognized for his enthusiasm for spreading the word to other people in wheelchairs.
Chad was born to be outdoors.

“My dad took me on my first duck hunt when I was ten years old,” says Waligura, a native of Bryan, Texas. “When I was little, my grandparents used to pick me up from school all the time and take me down to Carancahua Bay in Port Alto, and I would fish with my grandfather all weekend. I went to their house whenever I could.”

In 1986, Waligura was diving into a swimming pool and hit the bottom. “I remember everything,” he says. The impact broke his neck, leaving him a C6-7 quadriplegic. At the age of 17, Chad immediately realized what had happened to him. “I knew that it was permanent, so I was at peace with that.”

What he was not at peace with was the idea that his injury meant permanent deprivation of the sporting life outdoors. “There were just some things that I wasn’t going to quit doing no matter what got in the way,” he says.

What Matters Most

“SCI makes you see what’s important to you,” Waligura says, recalling the days when his injury was new. “My biggest concern was whether I was still going to be able to do some of the things I love the most. Hunting was at the top of that list. It gave me the reason to keep on when none existed. As long as I had that, I could give up everything else.”

When he got out of the hospital, Waligura almost immediately began looking for information about hunting and fishing for people with disabilities. “There was none out there. Nobody could tell me about it.” So determined was he not to lose his great passions, Chad postponed his senior year at El Campo High School to work on learning to accomplish them with a disability.

The way that he hunted had to change, but Chad was determined to prove that it could still be done. Sent home from rehab with a metal device used to hold a writing utensil, he figured that he could shoot with it, as well. “I tried it the year that I came home, but it didn’t work well. The metal was on the inside of my finger, and I couldn’t feel the trigger. I had somebody bend it around backwards for me, to fit around the outside of my finger and give it support. That was just a prototype.”

Once that proved effective, he went to a doctor, had him trace around his hand, and asked him to make the shooting device.

“At first, I couldn’t hold the gun without falling forward. Since I don’t have any trunk muscles, I need Velcro shoulder straps to give me support. The old ones would fit on my shoulder and Velcro in the front. They weren’t the best, but I redesigned them so that they would fit on the push handles of my chair and sit up a little higher. It’s one piece, so I can tighten and loosen it myself easily.”

After finishing high school, Chad attended Texas A&M University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in wildlife and fishery science in 1993. He tried living independently. “I wanted to see if I could do it, but it’s too timeconsuming to do everything on your own.”

Where There’s a Will . . .

Waligura launched Follow Me Outdoors in 1996.

“I wanted it to be an informational source, so that people interested in this could see somebody with a disability that has done these kinds of things,” he explains. “I wanted to show people what they could do, and with what kind of equipment.”

His site includes links to pages showing, for example, a variety of accessible hunting blind. (“Some of them are more spacious, and some of them have windows at the right height for a wheelchair,” he says.) It also includes links to sporting goods and clothing stores for the hunter with SCI.

“The biggest concern for disabled hunters is keeping warm when it’s cold,” Chad points out. “Most of the stuff is for keeping your legs and feet warm. There are a few things out there that work well, such as body suits that both keep heat in and help circulation. Spun silk does a good job of insulating, too.” The site also features information on adaptive archery bows, water and snow skis.

“It takes a little bit of extra preparation to make it accessible, but hunting is easy to do with a disability. If you see somebody doing it, you can do it,” he maintains. “What I like most about hunting now is that nothing has changed. Even with a disability, the hunting’s still the same. Nothing changes in that world.”

In 1997, Chad returned to the Texas Institute for Rehabilitation and Research Hospital- for a unique reason. “They started a mentor program where people who have been out of the hospital a long time get hooked up with new patients,” he explains. “They used to call me back all the time, because I was the only one they knew of who hunted and fished, and they had patients asking them about it. I’d go in and tell patients hunting and fishing stories, tell them what to do and how to do it, show them my stuff, and give presentations to the staff and patients. They still call me in, every now and then.”

In 1998, he found another way to share his knowledge. “I put on a couple of hunts every year for disabled hunters. There are a lot of free disabled group hunts all over the country,” he says. “A lot of people don’t have a lot of money to throw around, and if you don’t, it’s hard to go hunting. I’ve been on quite a few of the free hunts, to see what they were like. The people there have a lot of experience with disabled hunters.”

Hunting affords him the opportunity to travel. In 2004, Chad went to the top of Manitoba, Canada, to bear hunt. “That was an amazing trip. I have a group of friends that I travel with. I shot a bear, but they couldn’t find him.” That summer, he also went to Argentina to hunt for doves and ducks. “There’s millions of birds there.” He also makes an annual trek to New Mexico to hunt antelope.

Quitting is not part of his vocabulary. “You have to be persistent to live and live well,” he says, “even when it’s so tough.”

Lori A. Wood is a regular contributor to Orbit.