Poacher Bullet Misses Kids By 6 Inches!

Editor’s Note: A primary reason we’re publishing this story after 30 years is because it could save a life. If you’ve ever been tempted to shoot a deer after dark or from a road, please re-consider. Resisting that urge could change your life and save another. Apart from the illegality and fair-chase aspect, there is a giant safety concern from poachers who ride in vehicles, look for deer  and start shooting. In this situation, poachers likely have no idea what’s beyond their target animal.

The below story from Nov. 1994 played out like that in Marion County. A road poacher fired a shot at a spike buck, and the bullet kept going, right into a trailer where three kids were sitting on a couch.

“At least we were able to call the police and didn’t have to call an ambulance,” said Kim Keel, of Duluth, after a night-hunting poacher’s high-powered rifle bullet plowed through a trailer at a Marion County hunt camp and just missed her two children and a friend’s child who were inside.

The incident could easily have turned into a tragedy.

Kim and her husband Gary, with their two children, were hunting in Marion County on Nov. 5, 1994 with Gary’s father, Bobby, and friend John Brewer, also of Duluth, and his son. Their hunt camp is located about halfway between Cusseta and Buena Vista, and they have a mobile-home trailer set up on the property. There is electricity run to the trailer, and on a telephone pole near the trailer three floodlights had been hooked up to provide light outside.

At about 8 p.m. the floodlights were burning, and Gary and John were outside tending a campfire.

Inside the trailer, Gary and Kim’s 4-year-old daughter Sarah and 5-year-old son Hunter were sitting on the sofa with 4-year-old Mitchell Brewer. Bobby Keel had just closed the refrigerator door and was standing at the end of the sofa when he heard the explosion of a gun going off nearby—and then another shot.

“I heard two loud explosions,” said Bobby. “I thought Gary might have put firecrackers in the fire, and I started out the door. Gary and John had run around the end of the trailer and yelled that someone was spotlighting deer in the pasture between the trailer and the road.”

John and Gary jumped into the Jeep and took off toward the road to try to catch the night hunters. When they had rounded the end of the trailer, they could see the headlights of a small pickup that had pulled diagonally off the road so that the truck’s headlights would shine into the field. The driver’s side window was facing the trailer and the shots had apparently been fired by the driver.

Meanwhile, Kim went into the trailer to check on the kids. Her son, Hunter, pointed to a hole in the window screen behind the sofa.

“Look, mom, here’s where it came in,” he told her.

At first Kim couldn’t believe that a bullet had come into the trailer, but she inspected the hole and then lined it up across the room and discovered a hole through a thin wall—and then a bullet hole in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. The bullet had come through the window, passed just over the children’s heads, crossed the room and went on into the kitchen. Kim estimates the round missed the kids’ heads by 6 inches. Bobby Keel had also been standing at the end of the sofa talking to the kids.

“They could have killed someone and they would have never known,” said Kim.

The Marion County sheriff’s department was called. And when the deputy looked inside the freezer, he located a high-powered rifle bullet in the ice tray in the freezer. The bullet, which had not mushroomed, was kept as evidence.

Gary and John did not catch the night hunter. When they reached the road, they turned left, and apparently the poacher had gone to the right. The next morning a dead spike buck was found in the field in front of the trailer.

“The deer was between the trailer and the road,” said Gary. “I think they hit the deer with the first shot, and the deer ran. They shot at it again as it ran, and that’s the shot that went into the trailer. The distance from the trailer to the road is a couple hundred yards,” said Gary.

“There is a privet hedge there, but it’s not like we were hidden—the triple floodlights were burning. Whoever shot must have been so focused on the deer that they didn’t even notice us. We are really lucky that no one was hurt!”