Stacey Wheeler can remember the early fall mornings when her husband and three sons would gear up and head into the woods during deer hunting season. She usually stayed in bed.
Wheeler didn’t think much about it. That’s the way things had always been at their homestead in Bowdoin.
“At first it was just something they would do with dad. I didn’t feel like I was necessarily missing out,” she said.
There came a time when Wheeler yearned to have a closer relationship with her teenage boys.
Calling it a bit of divine intervention, Stacey realized how she could build a better bond with them. Why was it that they were so willing to get up at 3 a.m. and go deer hunting?
Stacey reasoned that she must be missing out on something. Her husband, Lincoln, and sons are all passionate about hunting.
She started researching hunting and wound up enrolling in a hunter safety course, alongside her three boys. In Maine, the course isn’t required until age 16 for junior hunters, who may be accompanied by a licensed adult.
Once she got out in the woods herself, Stacey quickly realized why all of her boys were so keen on hunting.
“I saw my first buck and that was the end for me. Now I hunt more than my husband does,” she said.
When Stacey first started hunting with her sons, the time spent together in the woods ignited an entirely new connection between them.
They also go bird hunting and deer hunting together and their relationships have been completely transformed by sharing those experiences.
“I have had other mothers ask me, ‘How do you get your kids to talk to you’? It has connected my sons and I in a way that we never would have,” Stacey said.
And their interactions now go way beyond hunting. Last fall, Stacey and one of her sons purchased a German shorthaired pointer together for bird hunting.
Their shared love of hunting has led to a deeper sense of understanding between them in all things.
She views embracing hunting to connect with her sons as an example of what other mothers might consider to help deepen the connection with their children.
“It doesn’t have to be hunting. It has to be what your kid is passionate about,” she said, stressing that the benefits go beyond their relationship.
As a nurse at the Togus VA Veterans Hospital, Stacey works a lot with people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Hunting helps her unwind from her own pressures.
“The woods give me a place to decompress and to connect with my own family,” Stacey said. “It’s my place of solace.”
Once she was bitten by the hunting bug, Stacey didn’t hesitate to head out on her own when the opportunity presented itself.
“After I started hunting, I put the kids on the bus and I’d go down to the woods,” she said. “Do I see a deer every time? Absolutely not. Do I watch raccoons waddle over a stone wall and play in the mud and just have a half an hour of pure joy out of that? Yes.”
Stacey flexed her hunting skills on opening day when she harvested a five-point buck on their property. Hunting allows her to live a more self-sufficient lifestyle and connect with other women seeking the benefits of getting outdoors.
“My kids are getting older and so they are hunting more without me,” she said. “And as the nest starts to empty, it also gives me a connection with like-minded women.”