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Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend July 28, 2005 Safari Wish hunt helps cancer survivors By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune Luckless after stocking exotic fallow deer all day on a central Oregon ranch, Connor Wilks and his guide walked down a draw and found a surprise. Standing in the mid-day shade was a large ibex, a horned goat indigenous to Iraq and one of many exotic animals on the private hunting preserve. "I had never even heard of an ibex before," says Wilks, 16, of Ashland. He also had never heard of acute lymphocytic leukemia either, until doctors two years ago found it coursing through his veins. Wilks already had gotten the best of leukemia. And that day last December on the Clover Creek Ranch near Ashwood, Wilks got the best of the ibex. Advertisement His 60-yard shot was a skip in the park compared to weekly bags of chemotherapy siphoned into his body to take out his cancer. "I really enjoyed that a lot," Wilks recalls of the hunt. "It wasn’t just the shot. It was being out in the woods doing things I love again." Out-of-the-woods cancer survivors like Wilks are getting trips into the woods as hunters with the helping hand of a Southern Oregon hunting group. Wilks is one of six Southern Oregon teen cancer survivors or disabled kids who have had free dream hunts in the past three years from the Klamath Falls Chapter of Safari Club International. The chapter’s local version of SCI’s "Safari Wish" hunters provides kids 12-17 years old with hunts. Though the chapter is based in Klamath Falls, the majority of the Southern Oregonians who have benefited from the program so far have come from Jackson and Josephine counties. The program will continue next month when Dustin Farley travels to Coos County to resume a guided bear hunt that saw him take four shots and four bears but coming up empty last spring. His return trip is courtesy of Coquille-based guide Ken Wilson, who guided Farley last spring. "I was excited," says Dustin Farley, a 14-year-old Grants Pass boy who beat bone cancer. "It’s now my favorite thing to do. And with Ken, I’ve made a good friend." Hunting is a good activity for more than Dustin’s spirit, says mom Sherry Farley. Dustin lost most of his bone and muscle in his right leg and has to walk with a prosthesis, so any physical activity helps his body further recover. "It’s great therapy," she says. "He has to get out there and walk up and down those hills." The program’s roots stem back to the late 1990s as a hunters’ version of the national Make a Wish Foundation, which grants a once-in-a-lifetime wish for kids with chronic diseases. The foundation was big on things like trips to Disneyland or sideline seats to a Los Angeles Lakers game. But it shied away from activities involving firearms or weapons, says Allyson Barreras, the humanitarian services coordinator for the SCI Foundation in Tucson, Ariz. In 1999, SCI’s Central Missouri Chapter decided to put hunting on the wish list of cancer-beaters and began the program which eventually morphed into Safari Wish, Barreras says. Now, slightly less than one-third of SCI’s 179 chapters grant hunting wishes that range from simple turkey hunts near home to exotic trips to Alaska or Africa, Barreras says. "It’s an outdoor experience," she says. "It doesn’t have to necessarily be something to do with hunting." For Wilks, it’s all about hunting. As a child, he accompanied his father, Steve Wilks, on various deer and elk hunts until he earned his hunter-education certificate and shot his first deer at age 12 in 2002. In the summer of 2003 he was looking forward to his next hunt when he discovered walnut-sized lumps in his neck and behind his ears. Wilks became one of about 4,000 Americans to get this form of leukemia, also called ALL, that year. Aggressive, weekly chemotherapy treatments here and at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland eventually beat back his "blood cancer" as Wilks calls it. But it whittled his body to 100 pounds by Christmas, robbing him of much of his stamina and all of his hair. He tried hunting a few times with his dad, but he could barely get out of the car. "My stamina was dead," he says. But his luck wasn’t. "Out of the blue," Wilks says, he received a call from Bob Mitchell, who runs the Klamath Falls chapter’s Safari Wish program. Mitchell asked if Wilks wanted to go hunting. "All the expenses were covered and everything," he says. "How could I say no?" At the Clover Creek Ranch near Ashwood, Wilks stalked fallow deer. When he stumbled upon the ibex, he couldn’t say no. "I got kind of excited and took a shot," he says. "I don’t regret it." A shoulder mount of the goat now sits in Wilks’ basement, a trophy of sorts for winning his fight with leukemia. Wilks still gets monthly injections as part of his maintenance chemotherapy, and he hopes to be deemed cancer-free within two years. He also expects to be on Grizzly Peak or Mount Ashland on opening day of deer season, fulfilling the next stage in his own wish to remain a cancer survivor, and a hunter. "I don’t have my stamina all the way back, but I’m doing pretty good," he says. "I’ll actually be able to hunt, instead of having to just sit in the car and watch." Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail Safari Wish hunt helps cancer survivors ">[email protected] . Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2005 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. 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