Back in the Game: A Hunter’s Return to the Woods

Coffee brewed in the kitchen while camouflage, boots and turkey calls were gathered for the morning hunt ahead. Quiet conversations and laughs bounced around the room as everyone got ready. In just a couple of hours, Carson Pierce would find himself back in the turkey woods for one of the biggest hunts of his life.

Not because of the bird he hoped to kill.

But because, for the first time in a long time, life felt a little bit normal again. Just a year and a half earlier, doctors were unsure if Carson would survive a devastating car accident.

Now, at 21 years old, he was climbing into a blind beside his dad, Alan, calling turkeys on a Missouri farm hundreds of miles from home.

For Carson and his family, the weekend meant far more than hunting.

It meant healing.

Before the accident, Carson lived the kind of life built around the outdoors. Raised in Virginia, he hunted deer, ducks and turkeys with family and friends from a young age. He played baseball and other sports, loved wake surfing and spent time on the water in his own boat. Hunting was simply part of who he was.

So was hard work.

At just 19 years old, Carson was already working for Dominion Energy as a groundman, pursuing his dream of becoming a lineman. When storms rolled in, Carson volunteered for overtime. Long nights and exhausting shifts were normal. Sometimes the hours stretched so late his parents had to pick him up because he was too tired to drive home safely.

“We worked every day,” Carson said. “I left my house at like six o’clock and got to work at seven and left the next day at seven.”

Then came the rainy September day in 2024 that changed everything.

Carson remembers very little about the accident itself. Passersby found the 19-year-old unconscious outside his vehicle after the crash, just three miles from home. Carson believes he crawled out himself, though much of that day, and even months before and after the accident, remain missing from his memory.

Along with a traumatic brain injury, Carson suffered multiple other injuries in the crash. He was hospitalized in Norfolk, Virginia, immediately after the accident before later being transported to a facility in Georgia for extensive rehabilitation and therapy.

During his recovery, doctors temporarily removed part of his skull to relieve pressure from the brain injury before replacing it months later. For a time, Carson wore a protective helmet while going through therapy.

He spent nearly a year in hospitals and rehab facilities.

He turned 20 years old in a hospital room decorated by family.

And through every difficult step of recovery, he was never alone.

His parents, grandparents and loved ones stayed beside him through hospital stays, therapies and long days of uncertainty.

Even while Carson was in a semicoma, his family called one of the people who had been part of his life since childhood: Mike Luter.

Mike and his wife Judy first met Carson when Carson was just 4 years old, coaching his T-ball team before continuing to coach the same group of boys all the way through high school baseball.

Over the years, the relationship became far more than baseball.

The two hunted together, worked pheasant hunts together and shared countless hours outdoors together. So, while Carson lay unconscious in a hospital bed, his family held the phone to his ear so Mike could talk to him.

In the weeks after the accident, Mike constantly checked on Carson and his family, praying for the young man he had coached and mentored since childhood.

“I love you, son,” Mike told him during recovery.

Mike’s support for Carson stretched far beyond hospital visits and phone calls.

In May 2025, he organized a county rivalry baseball fundraiser for Carson, bringing together two local teams, including the same program Carson had once played for under Mike’s coaching years earlier.

Before the game, Carson walked onto the field and threw out the ceremonial first pitch.

For many in attendance, it was far more than baseball.

Mike and Judy Luter are longtime supporters and major donors of the National Wild Turkey Federation. With their children, they collectively run Legacy Ranch, which embodies the NWTF’s conservation and hunting heritage ethos.

The Luters have stayed close with Carson and his family throughout the recovery process.

Then, at the 2026 NWTF Convention and Sport Show in Nashville, Carson, his family and the Luters attended the event together, unaware of what Mike had been planning behind the scenes.

During the convention, Mike surprised Carson by purchasing a guided turkey hunt in Missouri to help reconnect him with the outdoors he loved so much before the accident.

The original plan was for Mike to attend the hunt alongside Carson and Carson’s dad, Alan. But after the dates shifted from the first weekend in May to the second, Mike could no longer make the trip work. Instead, he made sure Carson’s grandfather, Todd Rose, could attend in his place.

That decision brought Carson, Alan and Todd from Virginia to the small town of Edina, Missouri, where they were welcomed by Kevin Strange, Tom Ahonen and their families.

On Friday evening, Kevin first took the group to the Edina Livestock Sales, where he works and runs the sale barn. For Carson and his family, it was their first livestock auction and their first taste of what a rural farming town had to offer.

After unloading gear back at the cabin, everyone headed into town for dinner together. The group there met up with Tim Wells, best known for his appearances on the Sportsman Channel’s Relentless Pursuit and for his YouTube channel Tim Wells Bow Hunter.

Throughout the meal, people constantly stopped by the table to talk with Kevin, Tom and Tim. Stories, jokes and handshakes filled the restaurant as locals recognized them and welcomed their visitors from Virginia. By the end of the night, it already felt less like a guided hunt and more like old friends hanging out at turkey camp.

That evening, Carson talked openly about life before and after the accident.

Before the crash, hunting alone was normal. So was working long shifts, driving himself around and living independently. Now, things are different, and he spends more time with his family.

“Really now is making sure that I’m doing everything okay,” Carson said. “They’re always with me to make sure everything is going how it should go.”

Even duck hunting requires extra precautions now.

“We’re all in a swamp, kind of close together in case I fall,” he said.

Still, Carson hopes to eventually hunt on his own again someday.

“It’ll be really good when I can go by myself,” he said.

Early the next morning, Carson climbed into a blind with his dad and Tim, hoping to hear a gobble or two.

But, the woods were quiet that morning.

No gobbles rang out across the fields.

Still, the group stayed patient.

Eventually, a hen wandered into the decoys and lingered nearby before slipping back into the field. Then she reappeared, a gobbler following close behind and both heading straight for Carson and the blind.

The tom marched directly to the decoys and began attacking them.

Sitting beside his son in the blind, Alan could feel Carson shaking.

The gobbler stayed in front of them for several minutes, beating up the decoys while the hunters waited for the right moment.

Then Carson raised the 20-gauge shotgun and pulled the trigger.

The celebration afterward had very little to do with inches of beard or spur length.

Back at the cabin, Carson smiled through pictures with his turkey alongside Tim, his dad and his grandpa.

Everybody was laughing.

Everybody was proud.

At breakfast later that morning inside a small café at the livestock sale barn, Carson immediately picked up his phone and called Mike.

Before the hunt, Mike had texted him one simple reminder: “Remember to shoot the gobbler in the face.”

Laughing, Carson told him every detail of the hunt — the hen circling the decoys, the gobbler beating them up and the moment the bird finally stepped into range.

“I had the best time ever with Tim,” Carson said. “It was so much fun.”

When asked what it would have been like if Mike had been there in person, Carson smiled immediately.

“Mike would have made it all really funny and had everybody laughing,” he said. “He’s a lot of fun to be around.”

That night, the celebration continued back at camp.

Turkey and fish were fried up for dinner while family, neighbors and friends gathered around tables swapping stories and laughing late into the evening. Tim and Tom stayed for the celebration. Kevin’s family came over. For a little while, it simply felt like turkey season.

Not hospitals.

Not therapy schedules.

Not uncertainty.

Just people gathered around good food and the joys of the spring woods.

Today, Carson still faces challenges from the injuries sustained in the crash. Some memories remain missing. Certain parts of life look different than they once did.

But he is walking, talking, traveling and hunting again.

And through it all, the people who love him never stopped showing up.

Carson’s grandpa has watched his grandson fight through every stage of recovery, from hospital rooms to therapy appointments to spring mornings in the turkey woods.

Now, whether it’s hunting trips or everyday life, he stays close by Carson’s side.

But Todd does not look at his grandson with pity.

In fact, there is something he tells Carson often.

“You’re my hero.”

For Carson, this turkey hunt was never just about harvesting a bird. It was about finding pieces of himself again.

It was about healing in the outdoors surrounded by the people who helped carry him through the hardest chapter of his life.

And on a quiet Missouri morning, tucked inside a blind with his dad beside him and a gobbler standing in front of the decoys, Carson Pierce found himself back where he belonged.