His Brother’s Keeper

Now blind, this Ayden hunter has overcome tragedy and rebuilt his life with help from a friend.

Thomas Hemby of Ayden was riding a four-wheeler through the woods and fields of a Pitt County farm June 6, 2005.

At the time, Hemby, 32, was a successful sub-contracter who owned a local house-framing business. Life was good and profitable as the building boom was in full bloom.

Some 200 miles to the east, Hemby’s best friend, Brian Booth of Greenville, also 32, was fishing aboard a charter boat out of Hatteras.

But two black bears, a mother and a cub near the trail in Pitt County, knew nothing of four-wheelers or offshore fishing. They only knew that noisy, buzzing machines were coming much too close for comfort.

Hemby was riding with a group — between two other four wheelers — on a trail at land where he hunted whitetails. A four-wheeler in front of Hemby zoomed across a dry creek bottom, then came Hemby, going 40 to 45 mph, he estimated. He wasn’t wearing a protective helmet.

“I raced go-karts for years, and I wore a helmet a few weeks earlier on the four-wheeler at Wilson,” he said. “But that was the only time I’ve ever worn a helmet riding a four-wheeler.

“It was dusk, and it seemed like (the bears) were at the right side of the creek bottom. I can’t swear they were there; I didn’t remember anything after (the accident). But it seems like I saw two bears. I don’t know if I swerved to miss them. My friend on the four-wheeler behind me said he just saw my tail lights start flipping over.”

No matter what caused the accident, one thing is clear — Hemby’s machine rolled, throwing him in front of it, where the vehicle landed on him.

The four-wheeler’s rear metallic carry-all rack, Hemby believes, impacted the back of his head, and the handle bars landed on his head.

Then came darkness.

***

“I’ve been a deer hunter since I was 12 years old, going with my dad and Thomas, who is my best friend,” said Booth, who moved to the Greenville area with his family when he was 9 years old.

“Me and Thomas grew up together,” he said. “We played baseball at Ayden-Grifton High School. We still hunted deer at a few small, family-owned farms and, after several years of selective harvests, had killed several nice bucks.

“Deer hunting is in our blood; we were looking forward to the next (2005) season. The thought that a day would come that one of us wouldn’t be able to enjoy deer hunting never had been considered … it just wasn’t a possibility.”

Booth, who works for R&R Construction in Greenville, said when he received the phone call and learned his best friend had been injured in a four-wheeler accident, he wasn’t that upset. But the call changed his life.

“When I got the phone call, I was thinking Thomas was just banged up,” Booth said. “I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when I entered the Intensive Care Unit at Pitt Memorial Hospital.”

Booth didn’t recognize his friend, who was clinging to life. Hemby had a serious head injury, along with multiple contusions and abrasions.

“The doctors said whether he would make it or not was minute to minute,” Booth said.

But Hemby fought back. After spending weeks in the ICU and undergoing forehead reconstruction surgery, he was transferred to a rehabilitation unit where most of his body healed rapidly, except for one area.

“Thomas was walking and talking and coming around (mentally), but he’d lost his eyesight,” Booth said.

Hemby wouldn’t drive a four-wheeler, frame another house or see another deer.

“He had no (health) insurance,” Booth said.

With overwhelming medical bills, Hemby lost his truck, his business and his home. After he moved in with his mother and step-father, Hemby’s fiance moved to Colorado with their two-year-old daughter.

“I talked to Thomas every day,” Booth said. “He told me one day, ‘I’ve lost my life, Brian, and on top of that, I’ll never hunt again.”

The 2005 deer season passed quickly for Booth. He killed a buck, but the enjoyment wasn’t the same because of his friend’s absence.

“I was sitting in a box stand we’d built one day and started thinking what could be done so Thomas could hunt again,” he said.

Once the 2005 season ended, Booth talked to a friend, Jerry Bowlen of Guns Unlimited in Ayden. After several months of research and budget tightening, Booth bought a Rock River AR-15 in .223 caliber, basically a varmint gun for coyotes and groundhogs, but one that fires a quick, flat-shooting bullet that will kill a deer.

“I also bought the AR-15 because it’s versatile in mounting scopes,” Booth said.

He added a red-dot, point-of-impact scope with normal magnification and attached a piece of old sweat shirt to the retractable stock to make a rest for Hemby’s head a few inches to the side and not directly behind the scope.

The two friends began practicing with the rifle about a month before the opening day of the 2006 eastern N.C. gun season. Booth would take Hemby to a farm, set up targets, and they’d fire the AR-15 with Booth standing behind his friend, looking through the scope and aligning targets in the sight.

“He’d tell me which way to move the rifle, right or left, up or down,” Hemby said.

“After a few boxes of bullets, we were pretty good shots at 100 yards,” Booth said. “We were shooting 2- to 3-inch groups.”

During the early 2006 season, Booth hunted and saw shootable bucks. But he didn’t release an arrow or click off the safety of his muzzle-loader rifle.

“I was preparing and praying one of those bucks would show up opening morning (of gun season) within 100 yards,” he said. “I knew if we were going to take a shot, there would have to be a perfect presentation by the deer.”

Other hunters who knew what Booth was attempting to do with Hemby said he was wasting his time and money.

“At times I also wasn’t sure, but I believed,” he said. “I
wasn’t going to believe it couldn’t be done until me and Thomas tried.”

Booth called his friend Friday night, Oct. 13, 2006, the day before gun season opened.

“I told him to get ready; we were going deer hunting the next morning,” Booth said.

That morning Booth drove to Hemby’s home, loaded him in his truck, and they drove to a farm with an elevated box stand, with room enough for two hunters, stood in a soybean field.

“Thomas held onto my shoulder, and we walked to the stand,” Booth said.

After getting settled in the stand, Booth loaded Hemby’s AR-15 and his A-bolt .280 rifle. Booth made some noise in the dark and, he said with a chuckle, Hemby reminded him to be quiet.

When daylight illuminated the field, Booth saw a deer walking near the field’s edge toward their stand.

“I was looking at the deer with my binoculars and realized it was a buck we’d been hunting for three years,” Booth said.

The big 10-pointer walked within 40 yards of their box stand but turned into the woods before they could get Hemby’s rifle zeroed on the buck.

“I could have taken this deer, a main-frame 5×5 bigger than anyone in the area had killed, with my .280,” Booth said. “Thomas asked me why I didn’t shoot the buck, but I told him that wasn’t why we were out there.”

As the sun rose, Booth
didn’t see any of the bucks he’d watched during archery and muzzle-loader seasons. Then he looked out a window behind them and saw an eight-point buck standing broadside at 45 yards in the bean field.

“Brian said, ‘There he is; there he is,’ ” Hemby said.

“Even with us moving in the stand, the buck stood there like he was tied with a rope,” Booth said. “That was amazing, like this was meant to be.”

Booth turned Hemby into position and helped him center the red dot on the buck’s shoulder. When Booth whispered “shoot,” Hemby squeezed the trigger, and the buck fell.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Booth said. “I started yelling. This wasn’t the big buck, but that wasn’t the point. I started calling everyone I knew (with his cell phone), telling them what we’d done. I was crying.”

After a few minutes, Booth was ready to get out of the stand to check the buck, but Hemby reminded him the 10-pointer might walk out any minute, so they should wait.

Then Booth’s main concern came true.

“I looked behind us one more time to check the deer (Hemby had shot), and he was standing up,” he said. “That’s what I feared (with the small-caliber .223). I told Thomas I was going to finish him off, but Thomas wanted to take the shot.”

With Hemby aligned for a second shot, Booth told him to pull the trigger, and the buck fell for a final time.

Booth helped Hemby climb out of the stand and told him to wait while he checked to make sure the buck actually was down for the count.

“After I got to the buck, I yelled, ‘It’s an eight-pointer’ and Thomas left the stand and walked to me and the deer, 75 yards in the field,” Booth said. “He helped me drag it to the edge, but it really wore him out. He said he wasn’t in as good a shape as he used to be. I just wish he could have seen my face.”

After the story of their exploit spread, Booth said local hunters didn’t believe he’d helped a blind man shoot an eight-point buck with a .223 rifle.

“It didn’t matter to me,” Booth said. “I knew what we’d done, and so did Thomas. He told me even though he couldn’t see the deer, it felt great.”

The story didn’t end there. Hemby was excited about hunting again, so he and Booth went the next Friday to a different box stand near a cutover.

Another eight-pointer presented a broadside shot at 120 yards and stood still while Hemby missed twice. But his third shot hit the buck.

“I knew he had drilled that deer,” Booth said. “Once again, it was like something was holding that buck by the horns, while Thomas was shooting at him.”

Unable to find the buck that night, they decided to return the next day with Booth’s two tracking dogs.

Before they returned to the field the next day, Booth shot a seven-point buck at another hunting area.

As soon as Bodacious and Kelia (Booth’s dogs) reached a lane through some woods leading to the bean field where Hemby had shot his second buck, they ran away. So Booth, on foot with his friend, had to leave Hemby while he went looking for the dogs.

“I had to leave Thomas, blind, in the middle of the woods,” he said.

Booth’s dogs found the eight-pointer about 60 yards from where Hemby had made the shot the previous day. Hemby’s stepbrother, hunting nearby, helped Booth drag the buck to the field where they loaded it into a truck.

“My work didn’t allow me and Thomas to hunt anymore last year, but I didn’t care,” Booth said. “I spent the rest of the season in awe of what we’d done.”

Booth said he believed getting his friend involved in deer hunting after his multiple tragedies helped his recovery.

“I think it helped him to get on with his life,” Booth said. “I believe he would have done the same thing for me.”

Hemby said the first year out of the hospital “I was not in my right mind … I gave up and gave all my (hunting) stuff to my stepbrother.”

But once Booth talked about deer hunting during 2006, “I was ready,” Hemby said.

“I think I created a monster,” Booth said, laughing. “Now he wants to go (deer hunting) a lot. I think he’s forgotten he’s blind.”

After the experience of killing two eight-pointers in 2006, a feat many sighted hunters didn’t accomplish, Hemby’s confidence has soared.

Currently he spends Mondays through Thursdays in Raleigh at The Governor Morehead School, learning Braille and keyboard mobility.

“I know the Braille alphabet,” Hemby said proudly. “I’m not good at reading yet, but I’ll get there.”

“He’s started building stuff with his hands again, too,” Booth said. “He’s building shooting tables to sight in rifles. It takes him a long time, but he’s doing it.”

Hemby credits Booth with getting him interested in living again through their hunting adventures.

“Deer hunting definitely helped my attitude,” he said. “Now I know that life goes on. If you don’t have real sight, you can have the sight of God.”

During October, Hemby got good news that his daughter, Kassidy, now 4, will return to North Carolina to visit him.

“We’re gonna have a good time,” he said. “Then the next day I’m going deer hunting with Brian.”