Balfour Beatty Construction Hosts Pig Hunt for Wounded Veterans
Hunting Helps Wounded Heroes Heal
DALLAS, TX –-(AmmoLand.com)- For many seriously injured military veterans, sports and outdoor activities have been shown to be effective in helping them rebuild confidence and focus on their abilities to achieve. For that reason, in mid-March, Balfour Beatty Construction’s Dallas/Fort Worth division hosted a week-long pig hunt for wounded veterans at their hunting lease in Richland Springs, Texas.
“The ORHF hunts are huge for guys like me”
Balfour Beatty Construction employees labored before the event to prepare the site for the heroic hunters, including building ramps for the hunting cabin and special deer blinds to accommodate wheelchairs.
The event, organized through the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA) Outdoor Recreation Heritage Fund (ORHF) with Balfour Beatty hunting lease partner Jack Hazel, also received additional support from other industry organizations. Savage Sports Corporation provided new guns for the hunters to test, and was represented by company CEO Ron Coburn; Crimson Trace Lasers contributed additional guns and laser sighting accessories and was represented by Travis Noteboom, Director of Public Relations; and Outdoor Life magazine Executive Editor John Snow was present to provide full coverage of the event.
Five wounded veterans participated in the hunt: PVA-ORHF Chairman, Joe Fox, a retired USMC Vietnam Veteran who hunts from a wheelchair; Dr. Stanley McGowan, a retired U.S. Army Captain, who served in Vietnam and is blind; quadriplegic SSG Matthew Keil, who is retired from the U.S. Army, who hunts using a power chair with a custom “sip and puff” setup to operate his rifle; former U.S. Army SP4 David Bradshaw, who also hunts from a chair; and retired USMC Corporal Jason Mikolajcik, who is recuperating from extensive burns and shrapnel wounds received from an IED explosion in Iraq.
For SSG Keil, this trip marked his first time away from home without his wife since receiving his wounds. “The ORHF hunts are huge for guys like me,” said SSG Keil. “It gets me back out into the world, doing things I liked to do before my injury. And it’s great to be around other vets and people who see the guy … not the chair.”
The vets brought down 36 pigs in just three days of hunting, five times more than the lease hunters took in the entire 2009 hunting season.
The PVA Outdoor Heritage Fund, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, was established in 2001 to permanently support its many sports programs, including fishing, hand cycling and triathlon, track and field events, and recreational shooting, hunting, and fishing. To learn more about the organization, visit www.pvaheritagefund.org.
About Balfour Beatty Construction
Balfour Beatty Construction has been a leader in the U.S. commercial construction industry for 77 years, providing general contracting, at-risk construction management, design-build, preconstruction, public/private and turnkey services for clients nationwide. The company employs 2,100 professionals and was recently named among the Top 100 Best Companies To Work For® in the U.S. by Fortune Magazine. Balfour Beatty Construction is part of London-based Balfour Beatty plc, a global leader in professional services, construction services, support services, and infrastructure investment.