Knife Accident Turns Wisconsin Bowhunt into All-Night Challenge

   Matt Jefko says he can’t sacrifice the time and money to hunt Western states, so he turns his Wisconsin hunts into hard-earned adventures whenever possible.

   But after this Middleton high-school teacher arrowed a buck in southwestern Wisconsin’s Yellowstone Lake State Park, he triggered more adventure than most hunters ever find on the Great Plains or in the Rocky Mountains.

   Jefko, 41, wouldn’t wish similar misadventures on anyone.

   He’s just grateful he’s still enjoying his family and teaching his classes one block from home.

   And he refuses to say he was simply unlucky.

   “It could have gone much worse,” Jefko said. “It’s like that Cormac McCarthy quote (from “No Country for Old Men”): ‘You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.’”

Matt Jefko snapped this photo of his fully loaded backpack before enduring a long night that ended in a Madison hospital.  — Photos printed with Matt Jefko's permission

Jefko’s adventure began early and lasted over 24 hours. He awoke at 2 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 4, and drove 50 miles to the 5,000-acre park and wildlife area in Lafayette County. He likes hunting the property’s edges and far interiors, so he arrived ready for a 2-mile hike and all-day sit. Besides food, arrows, compound bow, bow quiver and extra clothes, Jefko packed in 40 pounds of gear, including a treestand, climbing sticks and safety harness.

    He then hiked into the darkness, set up his treestand by 5:45 a.m., and waited a half-hour for shooting light. He was hunting an oak flat between a farmer’s field and several wooded drainages. He felt confident because he saw nearly 20 deer when hunting there the previous weekend, including a giant buck that stood up behind him.

   Sure enough, a deer walked by in dawn’s gray-light. Later, he spotted a distant doe, and a small buck at midday. The woods then stayed quiet until 20 minutes before sunset, when a young buck walked within 10 yards. The shooting angle was steep, but Jefko’s arrow buckled the buck.

   He climbed down, finished the buck, removed his stand and ladder from the tree, and strapped everything to his backpack for the return hike. Then he field-dressed the buck and planned how to haul everything to his car in two trips. He decided to first pack out the buck’s head and neck with his treestand and climbing sticks, and then return for the carcass.

   Matt Jefko took this photo of his right leg after wrapping and securing a ratchet strap above his knee to slow the bleeding inches below.

   After severing the buck’s spine just above its chest, he dropped the head and neck beside his pack. Then he grabbed a strap and knelt beside the pack to secure the load.

   As his right knee pressed into the ground, sharp pain knifed through him.

   “I thought I kneeled onto a sharp stick, but when I jerked back, I saw my knife sticking into the outside of my knee,” Jefko said. “When I read the hospital paperwork later, they said it went in 7 centimeters, or not quite 3 inches. It’s a very sharp carbon-steel blade, but also super rusty. When I reached down, blood was pouring out of my knee.”

   Jefko has killed over 30 deer and knows to not lay his knife on the ground between cuts. He thinks he slid the knife and its sheath into the same jacket pocket he always uses, but it likely fell out as he twisted the buck’s neck free of the carcass. The grass was tall and thick enough to hold the knife on its spine, blade up.

   With blood flowing down his calf, Jefko grabbed a ratchet strap from his pack. He wrapped it several times around his leg above the knee, and pulled it tight. He also balled up his pants leg and pressed it into the wound.

   He thought: “I have to get out of here. Now.”

  He called his friend, Matt Geiger in Mount Horeb, explained the situation, and strapped on his fully loaded pack. Then he started hobbling toward his car. “I admire people who remain stoic and don’t feel sorry for themselves,” he said. “My leg was hurting and dragging, but the bleeding had slowed. I kept putting one foot in front of the other. I started thinking I could make it.”

   When Jefko reached his car 1.8 miles away, he plugged in his cell phone to recharge its battery, which was down to 12%. He drank water, ate some apples, and decided he had the strength to go back for his buck. Even so, he was in pain and muscle spasms tormented his leg. Before returning with his hard-plastic icefishing sled to get his buck, he sent a text-message to his wife, Dani: “Hey, I shot a deer. It’s going to take me a little while to get home.”

   When halfway back to the buck, Jefko stopped to update Geiger and send another text to his wife. “I was legitimately struggling, feeling intense pain and dragging my leg, but I told myself I had a task to finish,” Jefko said.

   Once he reached the buck, he loaded it into the sled and started his final hike. “I didn’t want to leave the deer where coyotes and other animals could get it,” he said. “I had killed a deer. It was my responsibility to get it home.”

   Still, the drag was excruciating. Jefko weighs 156 pounds; probably not much more than the buck’s carcass. “I’d lean forward, push with my good leg, drag my right one, and move about 12 inches at a time,” he said. “I kept checking my leg. I felt this jelly-like ball of coagulated blood in my pant leg, so I knew I wasn’t bleeding anymore.”

   After two hours, Jefko reached the car.He struggled to load the buck into his car, and then sat in the front seat and cranked up the heat. He started shaking and whimpering involuntarily, but soon relaxed for the first time since kneeling on his knife.

   Jefko drove to Geiger’s home in Mount Horeb, dropped off his buck, and reached the hospital before midnight. A doctor closed the cut with five stitches, immobilized the knee, and sent him home around 6 a.m. on Nov. 5 with instructions to get checked in two days.

   “It’s almost a miracle I didn’t cut any tendons,” Jefko said. “All I cut was muscle. The doctor said I should be back to normal in nine weeks.”