Hunter Falls 25 Feet As Deer Stand Collapses

It all started when the Taylor County buck showed up on camera. Zach Getskow got one look and knew his season was about to be spent chasing one deer.

But hunting is hunting; things don’t always work out as planned.

“I got a deer that did this to me,” Zach said from his bed at home, finally there—and very glad to be—following a stay in a Macon hospital. “I got him on camera, then hunted him all season. I even told my buddies that this deer would be the death of me.”

At the time, he didn’t realize how prophetic that statement nearly was.

After days of not getting a glimpse of the buck, on private land near Butler, on the afternoon of Oct. 25, he decided to throw it a change-up and hang a stand in a different location. It was a life-altering decision—but for Zach, not the buck. After getting everything into place, he was in the process of taking a last satisfying look around… when the stand came apart and the ground rose up to meet him.

“I’ve been deer hunting since I was 10 years old,” Zach said. “I’ve hunted out of shooting houses, climbers, tripods, porta-potties, wooden stands, you name it. But I had never hunted out of a lock-on type stand. This was an older stand, and I couldn’t even find a brand name on it.”

Zach Getskow during much happier days with a buck he killed. On Oct. 25 this season, Zach fell 25 feet from a lock-on stand in Taylor County.

Deer hunters know the drill: make that final check to see how many branches are going to need removing from possible shooting lanes, ease down and slip out. However…

“I got it strapped to the tree and climbed off the ladder and over into it to get a look around to see if anything needed to be cut. Everything looked good, so I stood up, gave a little hop to make sure the stand was set, and two steel cables broke. I just dropped 25 feet straight down.”

In the blink of an eye, the lives of Zach, his wife Carley, and their four little girls had just changed.

The children range in age from 8 to 2; number five—and he’s praying for a son—is on the way. In talking with him and others, one thing that’s quickly learned about this guy is that he’s surrounded not only by family but also by a large group of friends who have stepped in to aid in his comeback. Fortunately, one of them was with him when the accident happened.

Zach owns a diesel repair shop, Lethal Injection, in Fortson in Harris County. He also does grounds maintenance in Taylor County. His dad, Pete, has an auto repair shop in Columbus, and it was one of his employees, Charlie Rouse, along on the scary afternoon.

“This is a guy who’s like a brother to me,” Charlie said. “He’s always been there for me, always there when I called him. That afternoon was my first time out there on this property, and all we were going to do was put up a stand. It wasn’t a new lock-on. We got the ladder portion up, I handed him the platform that you sit on, and he got up there and strapped it in place.

“He stood on it, then sat down, then stood back up again. When he did, the support straps going down to the part you stand on broke and tumbled him out on the ground. He was conscious the whole time, struggling to get up and I had to try to keep him still. He kept saying, ‘I can’t move my legs, I can’t move my legs.’”

Meanwhile, another of Zach’s long-time friends was about to get the bad news—and hit the road headed east.

“We all grew up together in Harris County,” said James Archer, “and my brother Evans works with Zach. He’s helped me out so much over the years and never asked anything in return; things like this shouldn’t happen to great folks like him. We’ve been hunting that same piece of property this year, so I knew where he was. But I was in Phenix City, Alabama when I got the call from the landowner. He said that y’all need to get over here because Zach fell out of a stand and can’t move.”

With Charlie hovering over him, Zach was able to call 911 and get help headed his way even while James raced in the same direction from roughly 60 miles away.

“It was probably around 6:30 when I got the call,” James recalled. “By the time we got there, the sheriff’s department and ambulance had driven in as close to him as they could, then placed him on a backboard and carried him out of there. In just a few minutes a helicopter landed in a nearby cotton field, and he was transported to the hospital.”

He was taken to The Medical Center—Navicent Health, the second-largest hospital in Georgia, about a 20-minute flight away in Macon.

“When it happened and I found myself on the ground just in an instant, the first thing I thought of was to get up and walk it off,” Zach said. “I just wanted to get up, and for everything on my body to work like it always had. But it hit me pretty quick that this wasn’t something I was just going to walk off.”

Zach was hanging a lock-on stand for the buck pictured above. The actual stand that gave way and sent him 25 feet to the ground is picture below.

Over the next 11 days in that Macon facility, the severity of the damage became clear.

“I broke my L1 vertebra, compressed my spinal cord and fractured my pelvis,” Zach stated. “My right wrist is messed up, and I have a wrap on it now. They wound up putting two rods and eight screws in my back.”

As a quick primer, know that the L1 vertebra is part of what is known as the lumbar spine, vertebrae L1 through L5, in the lower part of the back. Besides spinal cord tissue, they also contain nerves which control activity between the brain and legs. That, at this point, is Zach’s major issue. However, “compressed” is a very good word in this situation. Had the spinal cord been severed, instead of sustaining the lesser amount of injury it did, all communication between the brain and the body below the injury would have been cut off. In short, Zach could have been facing total paralysis below that L1. But not all the news is bad.

“I have gained movement back in my thighs, from the knees up,” he said. “From the knee down, I can’t get them to respond. Lying on the bed, I can lift my legs up off of it, so that gives me something to look forward to. I’m doing physical therapy at Piedmont in Columbus, a bunch of active movements like kicking and pushing, A typical session is that I’d like to work out an hour a day, but I’m lucky if I get 20 minutes. I can stay as long as I want to, but I’d really like to have someone to work out with. It’s just that nobody’s got the time. My girls are hanging in there; they’re not used to this, but they’re giving it all they’ve got. They build me up.”

And at a time when he needs it most. The physical aspect of such a devastating event is one thing; the mental is a whole different ball game.

“Mentally, it’s been rough,” Zach admits. “I need some different scenery, to get out of my room. I got to get back to work.”

That attitude buoys everyone around him, and that tight-knit circle of friends is pulling hard for Zach.

“Hopefully through rehab and therapy he will be able to walk again,” James Archer said. “We’re shooting for the stars and trying to keep his spirits up. We ask for support and prayers from other outdoorsmen, because we’re all in this together. It was just a freak accident; it could happen to anybody.”

Charlie Rouse, too, recognizes the battle of emotions.

“He’s having a hard time right now; he sees some light at the end of the tunnel, but he gets in a down mood sometimes. He’s got some movement back already, but he can’t move his ankles yet. Overall, his legs are better, but the recovery just has to work its way on down below his knees.”

In the blink of an eye, the lives of Zach, his wife Carley and their four little girls changed. Zach is currently going through rehab and therapy and said he’ll never hunt off the ground again.

Unfortunately, battered nerves are notoriously slow healers. As it happens, I have many years of personal experience with a great friend who also suffered a spinal injury, this one much worse than Zach’s. Jeff Hutcheson, who passed away earlier this year, was the single toughest-minded individual I ever knew, and there’s not even a close second. At the time of his injury, he could lift a total of 5 pounds in rehab; through massive amounts of work and willpower, that eventually grew to a couple hundred. His list of accomplishments—all from a wheelchair—would fill a large volume. Not least among those was the fact that we bear hunted together from the Okefenokee Swamp to over 100 miles north of Thunder Bay, Ontario. I packed him on my back many times, because that’s what friends do.

Zach Getskow has the same kind of friends, and with the drive he’s showing, his comeback can be as complete—minus the chair. Hutch was a tremendous inspiration for me, and you can learn a lot from his life also, Zach.

Zach mentioned all the different types of stands he’s hunted from over the years, but one question I had to ask centered on safety.

“I’ve never worn a safety harness, but I’ve never been in one of those lock-on stands before, either,” was his reply. “It won’t be a problem in the future because I won’t ever come off the ground again. Right now I don’t even want to think about a deer, but if I do get back into it, I’ll sit in a shooting house from now on. At this point, I just want to be sitting on the beach on the back of my boat.”

Hard work and determination will get you there, as well as back on your feet.

Want To Support The Getskow Family?

Obviously in a case such as this, medical costs are massive. If you’d like to financially help support the Getskow family, you have an option through a GoFundMe page at https://gf.me/u/y6ch9m.