Where There’s a Will …
By Mike Handley
As is almost always the case, 12-year-old Myka Coleman spotted the buck before her father, Mitch, saw it. Her dad has come to recognize the sharp intakes of breath and sometimes squeaks whenever his daughter wants attention.
She cannot tell him, “There’s a deer,” so she settles for what can only be explained as a vocalized exclamation point. More often than not, that means she’s ready to shoot it.
The Colemans have perfected the routine in the three years since the girl in the wheelchair made it clear she wanted to be a deer hunter. Her parents rely on technology — a device the size of a large iPad that enables the little girl with cerebral palsy to communicate by staring at the screen’s grid of letters, words and images.
Myka began by hunting family land in Ohio, where they’ve added ramps to stationary blinds. In 2023, she and her 15-year-sister, Ayla, also hunted the Illinois youth firearms season, thanks to invites from a new friend they met during a team calf-roping event close to their McConnelsville home.
The timed team event involves two riders, one roping a calf’s front legs, the other its hind legs.
Mitch’s Mississippi cousins had introduced them to Michael Shows, a former Mississippian, who wound up winning a belt buckle at the event, a prize he gave to young Myka.
Michael suggested she wear it the next time she showed a pig at the local fair, another one of her hobbies, one for which she’s been named a grand champion.
Everyone had so much fun in Illinois that the girls were re-invited in 2024. Thoughts of repeating their successes from the previous year made the nine-hour drive bearable.
Myka scored on Oct. 14, the last day of the trip. She and her father, a high-voltage cable splicer, had gone to a popup blind overlooking an alfalfa field surrounded by crops.
“Myka can sit in her chair for only two hours at a time, so we went out late to catch the last hour or so before sundown,” Mitch said. “It was chilly, but not as cold as it had been the previous day.”
The blind was set up beneath an existing shooting house on stilts. While Mitch and Myka sat in it, mom Airel waited in a barn about a mile distant. Ayla was hunting with Michael, whose father-in-law owns the Warren County tract.
About 15 minutes after father and daughter were settled, Myka saw a buck working a scrape at the end of
the field. They never expected to see a deer so early in the evening. There was still an hour of daylight remaining.
The 13-pointer, which nobody in Michael’s family had ever seen on the property, never left the field. It died moments after Myka acquired it on her iPhone’s screen. The phone is connected by bracket to the scope atop her rifle, which is equipped with a two-stage, battery-powered and button-style trigger.
The rifle is mounted on a tripod with a leveling head.
Mitch researched the aids, and he’s received a lot of help and information from the National Wild Turkey Federation’s Wheelin’ Sportsmen program.
While Illinois has long been considered a shotgun state, single-shot rifles were declared legal for deer in 2023.
A week after the Colemans returned home, Myka was hospitalized in Cincinnati for a couple of days.
“She had (an anxiety) storm, a small one,” her mother, Airel, explained. “She can’t calm herself down, so she has to be sedated. She had a bad one in 2022 and was in the hospital for eight weeks, six of those in the ICU. They had to induce a coma and put her on a ventilator while trying to regulate her meds.
“This time, they basically just wanted eyes on her while adjusting them,” she added.
Myka’s buck was scored for Buckmasters a couple of months later by Lori and Toby Hughes. The girl’s then-fourth and largest buck tallied 177 inches as a Semi-irregular.
She’s since taken a fifth buck.