Hunters' friend instills hope on mountaintops

It was the last question Brett Remmington expected, but there it was, out in the open and waiting for an answer.

He'd stopped by the Sandy tire store to buy tires. When the big man in the company shirt suddenly turned and asked, "Do you hunt?" he wasn't prepared. Tire sizes he knew. The answer to this question should have been obvious to anyone. He was in a wheelchair.

"Does it look like I can?" he shot back.

Not long after that, Remmington tagged an elk.

Mark Robison is a hunter. Always has been, always will be. So, it was not unusual for him to talk hunting with customers when they come into his tire/service store in Sandy — Hillside Tires and Service.

Nor did he feel uncomfortable asking the young man in the wheelchair nearby if he hunted. Taken back a little by the response, he asked, which was for him the next obvious question, "Would you like to go hunting? If you would, I'll take you."

That was five years ago and since that meeting Robison has not only taken Remmington on several hunts, but somewhere in the area of 45 other people with physical limitations on hunts for everything from pheasants to deer and elk to exotic sheep.

These are hunts he finds "incredibly rewarding." For many of those he takes hunting, they've been "a life-changing experience."

Whit Fausett was born with spina bifida. Family members hunted, but he was limited to camping. Hunting, he felt, was something he'd never be able to do.

He met Robison at a sportsmen's show two years ago.

"He showed me pictures of people who were in wheelchairs who had gone on hunts. I thought it was great. He asked if I wanted to go on a hunt and gave me his name and phone number and said when I was ready to call," he remembered.

Robison took Fausett on an antelope hunt near Delta.

"I never thought it possible. It helped me to realize I don't have to sit in a wheelchair, but that I can get out to do just about anything anyone else can," said Fausett.

"It helped me to change my attitude. And, while I love hunting, just being able to get out and know I can do it is what I enjoy most. On one elk hunt, it was snowing and cold, and I got drenched. But it was great, just getting out; just being on a hunt."

Fausett, 19, just completed his first semester at the University of Utah in pre-med. He earned a 3.5 GPA and has aspirations of being a pediatrician . . . "And I know I can."

That one hunt with Remmington five years ago told Robison he was on to something.

"It was, for me, the most rewarding experience of my life. I love hunting, and to be able to share this with people who believe they could never go hunting is a feeling I can't explain," he said.