Blind Pennsylvanian realizes his dream of returning to hunting

From The Observer-Reporter:

Ever since he was a young boy, Donley Weaver wanted to hunt a Red Deer stag.

However, there were a couple of problems.

First and foremost, the Red Deer, one of the largest of the deer species, is native to Europe, Asia and small parts of northern Africa. It wasn't going to be a game animal Weaver was going to find roaming the woods around his home in Wind Ridge.
Paying for a Red Deer stag hunt was going to be a costly venture.

The second problem?

Because of a genetic condition called retinitis pigmentosa, which is characterized by the progressive loss of photoreceptor cells in the eyes, Weaver had slowly been going blind since early childhood.

When the blindness finally overtook Weaver in his early 30s, he felt his dream would never be realized. Worse than that, Weaver felt he would never hunt again.

Weaver can see light and dark but nothing else.

"My sight went so slowly that I don't really know when I officially lost it," said Weaver, now 40. "One day, I discovered that it really didn't make a difference whether I wore my glasses or not, so I just put them down and quit wearing them.

"I was pretty grumpy to be around because it was about the time of year when I liked to go hunting and I couldn't go. I was not a very nice person to be around."

Fortunately, for Weaver, his wife Eve wasn't going to allow him to mope around too long.

A hunter herself growing up in West Virginia, Eve took up the sport again to give Donley the opportunity to get back in the woods.

"He would go with me and sit in the woods," said Eve, the assistant director of nursing at Humbert Lane. "He would do the hard part, like dragging the deer. He did that for two or three years with me."

Eve began looking into ways for Donley to actually shoot a deer himself. A search of the Internet provided her with the answer.

"She found a blind guy on the net who was hunting," Donley said. "There was another guy who would get behind him and look through the sites. They explained that this is how to do it.

"I took a handgun scope and mounted it to my rifle and we went out. I leaned to my left and she looked over my shoulder and told me that would work."

With the handgun scope mounted to his rifle, Donley began hunting again. But he had a strain on his neck when he had to lean out of the way to allow his hunting companion to look through the scope made it difficult for him to hold his rifle steady.

He needed another plan.

Necessity is the mother of invention and Donley came up with a piece of equipment that allowed him to mount the handgun scope on the side of his rifle.

"People said that I couldn't do it, I couldn't put the scope on the side of the rifle, so I did it myself," Donley said. "I got a piece of one-inch aluminum piping and drilled and tapped it, put base rings on it. Then, I attached the handgun scope to that. It extends the scope about an inch-and-a-half to the side of the barrel."

Problem solved.

Since he began hunting again, Donley has taken two doe with his muzzleloader and a buck and a doe with his high-power rifle. He has also shot one turkey and some squirrels with his shotgun, though he admits that's a little more difficult.

"People don't think a blind person can actually get out and hunt. They just don't know," said Eve. "Once you explain it to them, they get it. I trust him in the woods better than a lot of people who can see."

With Donley's 40th birthday approaching in late November, Eve wanted to do something special for her husband.

She knew of his desire to hunt a Red Deer stag and thought, well, why not?

"Even before he lost his sight, he talked about it," Eve said. "Once he lost his sight, he never thought he'd be able to do it again.

"But once he set up his sight system for his rifle, there was no reason not to do it."

Eve contacted Goldfinger's Whitetails in Boyers about booking a Red Deer hunt for her husband. She explained his handicap and the owners there had no problem setting Donley up for a hunt.

"It was a landmark birthday, so I wanted to make it a special one," Eve said.

Mission accomplished.

Donley shot and killed his Red Bull Stag, fulfilling his lifelong dream.

"I couldn't believe how big it was," Donley said. "It really was a dream come true. My wife made my dream come true."

For Eve, it was also a momentous occasion.

"There are people out there who can't see, but Donley is proving that they can still do the things they love to do," she said. "His brother is in the same phase, losing his sight. He's in that stage where he doesn't think he'll be able to do anything. But Donley doesn't let his handicap get him down. You have to overcome it."

Said Donley, "The blindness doesn't mean anything to me. I knew since I was two that I was going blind. It's all on how you are going to let it affect you."