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, especially her middle son, Tanner. She wanted to make sure her “quiet” child didn’t go down the wrong path.
“I needed a way to talk to him without needing to talk to him,” she said.
Calling it a bit of divine intervention, Stacey realized how she could build a better bond with Tanner. Why was it that he was so willing to get up at 3 a.m. and go deer hunting?
“The push for me really came from finding out where my kid was at in life and what made him tick. And hunting and fishing is what made him tick,” she said.
Stacey reasoned that she must be missing out on something. Her husband, Lincoln, and sons Clayton, Tanner and Sawyer 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 Tanner, the time spent together in the woods ignited an entirely new connection between them.
“As time went on, and he and I started hunting together, we started hunting together a lot,” she said. “When he gets a deer, he calls me first.”
Tanner works as the sternman on the Independence, a lobster boat based in Harpswell, but once autumn descends on Maine he and his mother go bird hunting and deer hunting.
Their relationship has 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 son and I in a way that we never would have, had I not indulged in his passion,” Stacey said.
And their interactions now go way beyond hunting. Last fall, Stacey and Tanner 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.
“If he grabs a cup of coffee in the morning, or in the afternoon I happen to be home, he doesn’t sit in the chair across the living room for me, he sits at my hip and we have a discussion,” Stacey said.
She views embracing hunting to connect with her son 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.”