Sports Beat
by Dave Boehler
Beacon Sports Editor

RAYMOND STEPHAN proudly displays his first deer of his life. – Submitted photo

After five days of not even getting a shot off, Raymond Stephan switched arrows.

“I needed a change of luck,” he said.

So on the final day of his hunting trip, Stephan grabbed the arrow with the name Clyde written on it and 30 minutes later he got the only deer of his life.

“I was literally flabbergasted,” the 2012 Sheboygan South graduate said. “My first deer was shot using his arrow.”

Stephan, who usually hunts waterfowl and had not gone for deer until this year, was listening to a podcast from Working Class Bowhunter about a month ago.

It was talking about someone named Clyde who had died of cancer, and people were urged to write his name on an arrow as a way to honor him.

Stephan immediately did and took the arrow with him and a friend on a six-day hunting trip to Illinois at the beginning of November.

The two hunted from sun up to sun down the first five days.

But the last day – 6:52 a.m. to be exact – is when Stephan got the whitetail deer using Clyde’s arrow.

“I didn’t even know what to think,” Stephan said. “I was so pumped up. It was a breath-taking moment, I guess you could say.”

The deer – and the arrow – will be mounted on Stephan’s wall and will make for a great story anytime someone asks about it.

“It’s going to be awesome,” Stephan said.