By Mark Coleman

Jamie Spears (right) and his nephew, Jake, during a recent hunt in Arkansas.

Courtesy of Jamie Spears

Jamie Spears (right) and his nephew, Jake, during a recent hunt in Arkansas.

It’s easy to take walking across a marsh or flooded field in the early morning darkness for granted. The same goes for hopping in and out of a boat as you and your hunting partners set up for a morning hunt.

Until a late summer day 30 years ago, Jamie Spears didn’t give much thought to these or dozens of other similar activities. Jamie was born in Arkansas, and his family moved to South Carolina when he was three years old, but he made frequent trips back to his grandparents’ farm on the Louisiana/Arkansas border.

“The first time I ever went duck hunting was with my dad when I was in elementary school,” he says. “We had a boat, and we’d pull back up in the flooded willows and shoot ducks.”

Jamie served a tour in the Navy after high school and then returned to Louisiana for college, where he reconnected with friends and got back into duck hunting. Eventually Jamie settled in South Carolina to manage a farming operation. On a hot August afternoon in 1993, he was pulling a silage chopper around the edge of a corn field when the machine got stuck. While he was trying to free it, one of his boots got caught in the rollers. In an instant the chopper had swallowed both of his legs up to his thighs. He spent almost an hour in that position before paramedics were able to get him out.

Jamie was in intensive care for three weeks while recovering from a double amputation above the knees. He spent the fall in a physical rehabilitation facility in Boston, but the woods and waters were never far from his mind. The following season he was hunting again, although not every attempt was a success.

“In the beginning, I’d go down to the edge of the marsh and just sit on the four-wheeler,” Jamie says. “Pit blinds were easier—I could just slide over into them and sit on a platform at the end next to the dog box.”

He later began hunting flooded timber, where he can sit in a folding chair in the water. “Last time I did that it was a little deep and my waders got slam full of water. But we killed ducks,” he says with a smile.

Jamie’s nephew, Jake, was born while Jamie was in the hospital recovering from the accident. Jake is now a DU biologist working with landowners in Arkansas and Tennessee. He recalls his first duck hunts around the age of 10 on the family farm under Jamie’s tutelage. “He fueled my passion for the sport and my growing interest fueled his,” Jake says.

Describing what it’s like to hunt with his uncle, Jake says it’s not much different from hunting with anyone else. “He’s a pretty capable guy. He’s tougher than 99 percent of the people out there.”

When asked if any stories come to mind that epitomize Jamie’s waterfowling mindset, Jake recalls, “We showed up to hunt a gravel pit in Texas, and the path down to the water was too steep for the four-wheeler. We asked Jamie if he wanted to hunt somewhere else, and he said, ‘No, this is where the ducks are.’ Then he proceeded to crawl down to the water and back out after the hunt. There’s just no quit in him.”

Jamie’s season doesn’t end in January. Year-round, he makes duck calls in a shop behind his house. With a laugh he notes, “It took a loooong time just to get one to quack. I made a pickup truck load of calls that didn’t work.” Never deterred, he learned mostly through reading and trial and error, and today Jamie’s handmade calls are both beautiful and functional.

Jamie’s experience shows that physical limitations, or other misfortunes for that matter, shouldn’t keep you from doing the things you love. His advice? “Don’t think you can’t. Surround yourself with good people who share your interests and will help you figure out how to get out there.”

Clearly, we are capable of a lot more than many of us realize, and passion can be a powerful force.