Wife’s Tough Love Leads To Success In Deer Woods

Thomas Vann doesn’t let a 2016 fall from a deer stand keep him out of the deer woods these days. He killed this great Wheeler County buck with a crossbow earlier this season.

It was 2011 and it had just become legal to hunt over corn in Georgia. Thomas Vann took advantage and killed a huge buck with his bow. It is a Wheeler County record that still stands today.

Fast forward to the presidential election on Nov. 8, 2016. Before the night was over, Donald Trump would be elected in one of the biggest upsets in presidential history. Thomas’s life would be forever changed that night, but it had nothing to do with Donald Trump.

“I’m a truck driver and I had a run that night, so I texted my wife and told her I was coming down,” he said. “I was in a two-piece climbing stand. When I got down to 9 feet, the cable holding the upper part snapped, causing me to flip out backward. I only fell 9 feet, but I landed on my shoulder and neck. I was face down in the leaves and couldn’t breathe. I knew I was paralyzed. All I could think was my life was over.”

Thomas’s wife Belinda was home and had supper ready as she waited for her husband’s arrival. When he didn’t arrive and he didn’t answer her texts, she had a sixth sense something was wrong.

“I called my son and told him he needed to go find his daddy,” Belinda said. “He wasn’t concerned. He said he figured his dad was out in the swamp spreading some corn and you can’t get any reception there.”

When Thomas didn’t come back, his son and wife went looking for him. By that time, Thomas had been lying on the cold ground for 1 1/2 hours. He said he was about to take his final breath when his son and his wife found him.

Thomas was airlifted to Macon, and then he was immediately airlifted to the Shepherd Spinal Injury Center in Atlanta. There it was discovered that he broken the C5 and C6 vertebrae. He was paralyzed from the chest down. He could only move his elbows if he was sitting up straight.

At Shepherd, Thomas Vann would become one the center’s so many miracles.

“Ever getting to hunt again was the furthest thing from my mind,” he said. “The second day, the guy carried me upstairs to the running track and outfitted my wheelchair with a sip and puff. It’s a device that allows you aim a rifle. You can aim it left and right and up and down and then you can fire it by sipping on a tube.

“I sat there and cried.”

Thomas and Belinda are competitive bow shooters and travel to Illinois each year to compete in the Illinois AMA shoot.

“I thought it might cheer him up, so I suggested we go to Illinois to visit his old friends. He was all for it.”

In Illinois, a chance meeting would again change his life.

“There was a young boy there named Austin that had multiple sclerosis,” Belinda said. “He was shooting a crossbow. He was laughing and having a good time. I told my husband to look at him. I told him that he was lucky. I said he had lived his life before he was paralyzed, and that boy didn’t get to do that. My husband told the boy that he thought he could shoot a crossbow. The boy told him to come back the next year and he’d beat his brains out. He took it as a challenge.”

“I went back the next year and I hung with him for three rounds, but he eventually won,” Thomas said.

Belinda believes in tough love. She wasn’t going to let her husband give up. She’s tough.

“Greg Dixon has been my husband’s arms and legs throughout this ordeal,” she said. “He built a rebar platform that fits between his legs. His fingers sit on Velcro. He can tighten them around the crossbow with it.”

Thomas’ son and his wife go bear hunting in Canada each year. In 2023, they wanted Thomas to kill a bear. Using his rig, he did. Back home, he’s used the rig too kill a lot of hogs.

This past year, at age 64, Thomas killed a super buck that scores in the 130s.

Still, wife Belinda practices tough love.

“When he goes hunting, I get him set up and make sure he’s okay and I leave him,” she said. “I make him do it all on his own.”

Wheeler County Best Bow-Bucks Of All-Time