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The Benson Farm and Ranch, just outside of Johnson City , TX
, was the destination for VO’s latest adventure…Operation
Kiowa Warrior! The subject this week was US Army
Helicopter Pilot CW2 Pat Scrogin whose dream since
moving to
Texas was to shoot a Trophy
Fallow Deer. Pat’s wife, Stephanie, played an
instrumental part in this operation by packing all his gear
for us and keeping the surprise adventure a secret from Pat
for several months. Pat spent most of his days in the
sandbox supporting ground troops from the air in his Kiowa.
We thought it was only fitting to fly him out to the ranch
in style in a
Robinson R44 flown by the General Manager of the LBJ
Ranch, Lyndon Nugent. Unfortunately
Mother Nature
had other plans and visibility never reached over 500 feet.
We scrapped our initial plans and drove him out to the ranch
instead. At this point, we still hadn’t let on to Pat where
he was going or what he was doing. Lyndon simply explained
to Pat that he was told to bring him to specific coordinates
and that’s all he knew. As usual our sponsors stepped up to
assist in honoring Pat. Sitka outfitted our guest again
with the finest camo on the market, Silver Stag provided a
beautiful knife and Love Hirt’s worked with Pat’s wife to
come up with one of the most emotional Hero Crosses to date.
Once we had Pat on the ranch and outfitted, we worked hard
for several days stalking back and forth over this beautiful
Texas hill country (some of these hills were mountains to us
Texans) to find the trophy fallow that Pat deserved. This
was an amazing experience for us all with an incredible hero
and is an adventure which will stay with us forever! |