What an amazing story...If this doesn't encourage you to get out and hunt I don't know what will...It doesn't matter what your age, how experienced you are, or what sort of ailments you have, if you can get out into the woods you can bowhunt.
I really like Gary's advice about not sitting around at home watching TV and watching the world pass you by. Good stuff!
-Michael
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Year-round passion by: KEN ROGERS
Leaning against a workbench in his basement littered with what must be odds and ends of projects in the works, Gary Stefanovsky reaches into his pocket and pulls out a finger tab he uses to grip the string on his recurve bow.
While he's not in a position from his basement to release an arrow at the small black bear target in his back yard, Stefanovsky still slips the tab over the middle finger on his right hand and leaves it there for a time. He does this absent-mindedly and doesn't seem to notice the archery aid flapping against skin as he uses his hands to tell a story.
The Bismarck man shouldn't notice, considering the hundreds, or thousands of times in a 12-month stretch he pulls the bowstring back to the corner of his mouth before releasing. A tab, then, dangling from his finger should certainly go unnoticed. Sort of like wearing a pair of socks.
Born in a small town in Ohio, Stefanovsky, 48, didn't get serious about bowhunting until moving to North Dakota, where he was assigned as a missile mechanic at the Grand Forks Air Force Base in 1971. Today, when he's not teaching archery classes for the Bismarck Parks and Recreation District, a 36-week-a-year gig, he's throwing arrows from his Bighorn recurve at his 3-D animal targets -- targets that are worn out in the vital zones.
Or poring over maps for an upcoming caribou hunt somewhere up north, stalking bedded mule deer bucks in the badlands, sitting in a tree stand waiting for unsuspecting whitetails.
The short of it is, bowhunting is a year-round passion.
"What I love about it is that it's a simple sport, a solitary sport . . . it's just me against the animal," he said. "There's something about watching that arrow in flight. Something about it that is fascinating, addictive."
In his back yard one summer evening, Stefanovsky pulled the bowstring back over and over, brushing a full beard that you could hide a small bird in. His first three shots hit the 3-D black bear right where he was aiming.
"Focus on a spot . . . if you're not focusing on a spot, you're not going to hit it," he said between shots.
The group of arrows is tight. You could slip one playing card between them, but maybe not two.
You joke: "Hey, Gary. Think you can tighten that group up a little bit?"
He doesn't miss a beat and anchors two more arrows into the pretend bear's lungs.
Stefanovsky makes shooting the wooded bow look easy, effortless. You're glad you don't have antlers and are walking under the tree he's perched in.
But, obviously, there's something to shooting these recurve and long bows that rest horizontally in his basement when not in use. You prove that when you take your turn. The 3-D bear is hardly damaged, aside from a few holes in its rump.
Stefanovsky used to hunt with a compound bow, a weapon that is widely popular today. But after about six years of that, he switched to a more traditional form of archery.
"I got tired of lugging that compound around in the badlands for four days at a time," he said. "It was heavy, like hauling around a .270 (rifle). I wanted something lighter, something more challenging."
The challenge comes from having to get that much closer than he would, maybe, with his compound. The longest successful shot he's ever taken with one of his more traditional weapons was 30 yards at a pronghorn. When he tells you this, he makes it sound like even that was a little too far.
The animals Stefanovsky has hunted with a bow read like a who's who of big game quarry: javelina in Texas, Russian boar in Ohio, caribou in Newfoundland and the Northwest Territories, black bear in Canada, elk in Colorado, mule deer in the badlands and whitetails closer to home.
"There is something fascinating about caribou," said Stefanovsky who will venture to Alaska this fall in pursuit of the animals. "Maybe it's something about the antlers, something about the environment they live in ä to me, they're a real exotic animal."
Antlers from these animals can be found in his basement, next to bear skulls and other remains that demonstrate his success in the field.
Closer to home, it's the mule deer in the badlands that hold his fascination.
Hunting the latter, he said, is about getting up early, climbing to the top of a butte and then spending a lot of time sitting nearly motionless while using optics to scan the rugged up and down for animals slowly eating their way to daytime hideaways. Then comes the long -- and hopefully undetected -- hike to get in position for a shot.
Hunting mule deer with a bow can be difficult at best.
But it's the challenge, in part, that repeatedly lures Stefanovsky to the badlands, where he'll bunk in the back of his pickup or tent for two, three, sometimes four days at a time.
"The mule deer is the toughest animal in the state to hunt, in my opinion," he said.
He's arrowed two bucks and a doe over the years.
"Every animal you take with a bow is a satisfying animal," said Stefanovsky, who said he's not a trophy hunter.
Including those animals without high and wide antlers.
"Sometimes the does are the toughest to get close to," he said.
Visit with Stefanovsky and you get the distinct feeling that the days he spends afield are all special, none are taken for granted. It becomes clear why, when you learn that a handful of years ago there was a question of whether his days silently tiptoeing in the badlands, or trekking elsewhere were numbered.
In 1996, Stefanovsky had a tumor removed from his neck.
"I had the lump taken out and once they did the pathology, it was diagnosed as a malignant lymph node," he said.
What followed was a three-week stay in a cancer center in Minneapolis where he underwent a series of tests. Today, Stefanovsky is checked every six months for a disease that is now in remission.
"I don't let it bother me because, basically, there's nothing I can do," he said. "I try to stay healthy, don't do anything foolish and just try to live my life."
The surgery in 1996, as you might expect from Stefanovsky, didn't cancel a spring bear hunt in Canada. It was a good hunt, he remembers now. He even came home with a bear.
"I was hunting out of a tree stand, sitting for long periods of time, which gives you a lot of time to think about things," he said. "It was a trying time as a lot of things pass through my mind . . . cancer, dying young. It put things into perspectives, for sure. I knew I had to take it seriously, but I couldn't let it get to me, either."
Following the bear season, Stefanovsky underwent 12 weeks of radiation. The treatments ended, basically, as the bow season in the state was starting to heat up.
"My stamina was poor," he said. "Basically, I couldn't hunt."
Yet he did.
"I went out a couple of weeks after radiation and I would walk a bit, then I'd find a place to settle in and sleep for about a half-hour before getting up and doing it all over again," he said.
No matter the difficulties, it was better than the alternative.
"I just couldn't see sitting home in a rocking chair, watching TV and letting life pass me by," he said.
Stefanovsky said it was six, maybe seven months before he was really on his feet again, able to spend hours in the field without threatening to crawl under a tree and nap.
"And I still don't know if I'm back 100 percent," he said. "But maybe it's just because I'm getting older."
- Article courtesy of the "
Outdoor Journal" a publication of the Bismarck Tribune.
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