When most people think about terminally ill children having
their wishes fulfilled, they think about the Make A Wish Foundation and trips
to Disneyland.
Here in Texas, those wishes turn to guns and hunting.
“Make A Wish won’t do hunts,” noted Toby Kroeger, founder of
Hunt With Heart, a nonprofit organization he started with his wife to help
pediatric heart patients fulfill their dreams of hunting big game.
Although he is a believer in the Make A Wish mission, he has
discovered an unmet need of helping older children with life-altering health
issues fulfill their desire to go hunting.
The idea for Hunt With Heart began unexpectedly several
years ago when Kroeger’s wife Crystal asked him to help out at a camp sponsored
by her employer, Texas Children’s Hospital. Crystal works with cardiac patients
at the hospital and Toby is a lieutenant with the Harris County Sheriff’s
Office.
Each year the hospital and the It’s My Heart Foundation hold
a weekend camp for heart patients between the ages of 8 and 12 called Camp Pump
It Up. The camp was in need of male volunteers and when Crystal asked, Toby
didn’t have the heart to say no.
That first year Toby was a counselor in a cabin with a bunch
of boys, including a special youngster named Nick. The two of them formed a
special bond.
“Each year after that the hospital made sure they put him in
my cabin,” Toby said.
Then came that fateful day in 2011 when Toby was visiting
Nick in the hospital after a surgery. Nick asked him what he was going to do
that weekend and Toby told him he was going hunting.
“When I said it was hunting season, the inside of the room
got quiet and still,” he said.
Nick’s mother explained that it was his lifelong dream to go
hunting. He played hunting video games and talked about it a lot. Living with a
life-threatening heart condition, however, made the idea of going on a hunt
little more than a dream.
The Kroegers felt the need to make Nick’s dream come true.
Crystal began searching for a place for Nick to go hunting and made a cold call
to Beaver Creek Ranch, located northwest of Bryan/College Station. When Crystal
explained what they wanted to owners Jim and JoAnne Elzner, “they were equally
as excited about the opportunity to introduce Nick to hunting as we were.”
A month later the arrangements were made and Nick was able
to get his trophy. After that experience the Kroegers knew they couldn’t stop,
so they incorporated Hunt With Heart as a nonprofit organization and set up a
board of directors.
With coordination between Texas Children’s Hospital and Camp
Beaver Creek, Hunt With Heart held its first camp with six children and their parents,
mostly fathers. Initially the camp was for children 13-18 with serious heart
disease, but it was later expanded to include children with any life-threatening
or life-altering health issues.
The first outing was life-changing for everyone involved,
especially the Kroegers.
“What can we do to make it more than a one-weekend
experience?” Toby asked Crystal.
They decided to make the participants lifetime members in
the organization. They hold annual Christmas parties, clay shoots and other
activities. Beyond that, they discovered that the camps bonded the families in
special ways.
“The dads are getting to be there to do something special
with their kids and they’re getting to meet other dads in the same boat,” Toby
said.
Outside of camp, they have become a huge support network and
are often there for the children when they wind up back in the hospital.
“This isn’t just an organization they’re joining; it’s a
family,” Toby said. “When they become part of our organization they become part
of our family.”
Toby said the count is up to 33 camper families in their
larger family, but it extends beyond that. Other hunters volunteer as guides
and doctors at Children’s have extended their services, making them vital
members of the organization. Other businesses and organizations have become
members of the extended family, including John Guidry, a Sealy taxidermist.
The Kroegers met Guidry three years ago at the Texas Trophy
Hunters Extravaganza at what was then Reliant (now NRG) Center in Houston.
“They needed a taxidermist to help with some of their
stuff,” Guidry said.
The more he learned about the organization, the more his
heart went out to the kids. He now does all of their mounts, primarily skull
mounts.
“I don’t do it to receive anything back for it. It’s a 100
percent donation on my part,” he said.
His only request is to be present when the trophies are
presented to the young hunters. He usually presents the mounts to the children
at the Christmas party.
“It was an eye-opening experience for me because my family
has never had to deal with this,” he said.
More recently, Hunt with Heart has partnered with Bellville
Meat Market for the processing of the meat. Toby said they do it at a
significantly reduced cost. Quite often a portion of the meet is donated by
Hunt With Heart to other organizations.
Another supporter is GameGuard Outdoors, which provides camo
clothing and gear to the hunters.
Toby said everywhere he turns he finds more people and
businesses wanting to help out. Because of that generosity, the camp is
provided at no cost to the hunters and their families.
The camping experience is much more than just a hunt. Before
the campers fire their first shot, they are taught gun safety and test on a
range with small caliber rifles, working up to the ones they will use on the
hunt. Other activities include archery, fishing and taking ATV tours of the
ranch.
When they hunt, they usually go after exotics stocked on the
ranch, usually goats and deer, though some water buffalos have been taken. The
hunts are held twice a year and other ranches are becoming involved. One of
these is the Emerald T Ranch near Columbus.
At two camps, there were children on the national heart
transplant list who could not be more than an hour away from the hospital. In
order for them to be able to hunt and not be removed from the list, Burt’s
Condstruction provided a helicopter for the weekend.
Though all of the hunts and all of the children are special
to the Kroegers and their supporters, two youngsters on their hunt last spring really
stand out. Rylan, 11, and 15-year-old Macy were awaiting hearts. Both enjoyed
the weekend and Rylan had an exceptionally fun time hunting for Easter eggs
while wearing bunny ears.
A week after the hunt, he wore the ears into surgery to
receive his new heart. While he was recovering at Texas Children’s, Macy
received hers and they recovered together.
Hunt With Heart has done more than just help children
fulfill dreams of big game hunts. The foundation they started has helped send
one member to college, met financial needs for some of the families, provided
temporary housing assistance for a family from San Antonio needing to be near
the hospital, helped provide Christmas gifts, and even helped cover some of the
funeral costs for children who lost their battle with heart disease.
While Toby said the hunts mean everything to the young
hunters, he can’t put a price on what it does for the families. He said the parent-child
bonding that takes place is incredible, but more than that, the connection of
families with similar interests and issues and the support network they have
formed is a benefit he could never foresee and now can never do without.
“When they join our organization, they join our family,” he
said.
For more information: www.huntwithheart.org
