Jean Bogart wears her husband’s wedding ring around her neck while she waits for the deer hunter’s recovery from bullet wounds in the Rogue Valley Medical Center camping area with her family. Her 17-year-old daughter, Chelsea, is on the left. (Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell)
Sedated to the edge of consciousness and his lungs powered by a ventilator, Glen Bogart is struggling for his life in a Medford hospital, his body torn apart by a hunter's errant bullet meant for a black-tailed deer.
The 43-year-old Medford man has a collapsed lung, a shattered shoulder blade, a shredded left arm and a hole the size of a fist in his back.
Outside the Rogue Valley Medical Center's intensive-care unit, relatives have held vigil for Bogart since the Oct. 1 shooting in the mountains northeast of Ashland.
But they can't sit with Bogart, nor hold his hand. During those brief moments when Bogart awakes, he tries to free himself from the ventilator. They don't want to risk waking him.
So the best well-wishers can do is linger.
Advertisement | |
For nearly two weeks, Bogart has fought off pneumonia and infections as his family desperately waits for his condition to improve from the critical category that has capped his hospital chart since Oct. 2.
"I know he's strong and that he's a fighter or he wouldn't be alive right now," Jean Bogart says. "They keep telling me it's a waiting game. Well, 13 days later, we're still waiting.
"I don't know what to do."
Waiting has filled the days since Glen Bogart fell victim to what investigators believe was a hunting accident of the strangest of happenstance during the second day of the general black-tailed buck deer season for Western Oregon rifle hunters.
Bogart, the owner of a Medford auto-detailing business, was part of a hunting party of family and friends in the Daily Creek area northeast of Howard Prairie Lake, where he has hunted deer for three decades.
Also nearby was Cole Reeves, a 36-year-old Klamath Falls man hunting with his father, Stephen Reeves.
Cole Reeves was high on a heavily wooded slope scouting for deer when Bogart parked his pickup on a Forest Service road downhill from Reeves and about 100 yards away.
Bogart stepped out to look for deer down the ridge after telling his 17-year-old daughter, Chelsea, to stay in the truck.
"He told my daughter, 'I want you to stay in the truck. I don't want you to get shot,'" Jean Bogart says.
Moments later, Reeves says he spotted a blacktail buck and fired a single shot from his 7 mm bolt-action rifle downhill at the animal more than 200 feet away, but he missed, Jackson County sheriff's deputies say.
The bullet flew 319 feet through brush and across a Forest Service road and struck Bogart, who was standing off the road's shoulder, sheriff's Sgt. Colin Fagan says.
The bullet struck Bogart in the back, traveled through his torso and exited through his left arm. Though the bullet did not pierce his left lung, the concussion severely damaged it.
"It damaged the bottom half of his left lung so badly that he can't breathe on his own," Jean Bogart says.
Neither party was wearing bright-orange clothing, which is recommended but not required while hunting in Oregon. The state is one of 10 that don't require blaze orange.
Reeves told investigators he never saw Bogart before he fired.
Sheriff's investigators using laser surveying equipment at the scene have confirmed Reeves' account, Fagan says.
Investigators discovered that the spot where Reeves says he was standing when he fired, the spot where he says the deer was and the location where Bogart was shot all fell into a straight line, Fagan says.
"There's no indication that this was intentional in any way," Fagan says.
The shooting has been reported as a hunting accident and the case has remained under investigation, Fagan says.
After initial surgery to save Bogart's arm, he has shown little improvement, Jean Bogart says.
"They tell me every day that he's not out of the woods yet," Jean Bogart says. "I don't know if he even knows where he is or what's happening to him."
After more surgery Thursday to remove part of his lower lung, he remains sedated and on the ventilator.
Nancy Marshall, Glen Bogart's mother, worries that too much time on the respirator will suck precious strength from her son.
She wants doctors to remove the respirator so Bogart can take an enormous breath of air and begin healing.
"I believe he can do it," Marshall says.
Sitting in the RVMC hallway, Marshall tells how Bogart's injury has galvanized a formerly fractured family, and that she believes her son can feed off that energy.
Marshall says she had toxemia when she gave birth to Bogart, and doctors at the time gave them each a 10 percent chance to live.
So he's beat far worse odds before, she says.
"He came into this world fighting," she says. "He's not going out of this world without a fight."
Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail mfreeman@mailtribune.com.
How to help
Friends and members of Glen Bogart's family have set up a bank account to collect donations toward hospital bills accrued in his fight to recover from gunshot wounds suffered during an Oct. 1 hunting accident.
Bogart, 43, who owns an auto-detailing business in Medford, does not have health insurance, family members said.
An account in Bogart's name has been set up at Washington Mutual bank branches in Medford and Roseburg, according to the family.
Related Stories:
