A Gold Star Son Learns the Searching Classes His Father Left Behind

The sun was sinking toward the mesa when I pulled into the ranch. I parked the rental SUV, already covered in thick Colorado dust, just as Alex Nehl was gearing up to re-check the zero on his scope. 

Alex, a 14-year-old freshman from Washington, settles on his belly behind a classic Remington 700. I learn later that the gun was his late father’s hunting rifle. Alex shuffles into position, and I immediately see he’s comfortable behind it. I say as much, and Alex’s uncle, Daryl Thies, confirms my suspicions. 

“He’s been shooting since he was five,” Thies says. “He started on a Red Ryder BB gun. He had to use three fingers to pull the trigger.”

Alex’s father, James, re-barreled the Remington for 7mm WSM before he died in combat in Afghanistan. Alex is the only person to ever hunt with it, and he’s used it to drop mule deer from over 400 yards. 

“He doesn’t like to sneak,” says Thies, who served alongside Alex’s dad as an Army Ranger. “He likes to take long shots.”

When Alex’s first shot hits the target fewer than two inches right of center at 200 yards with a mild crosswind, I believe it. Why sneak when you can make shots like that?

Eric Schlukebir, an experienced guide and co-owner of our hosting outfitter, Whitaker Brothers Hunting Company, gets excited by the target. 

“Tomorrow is going to be fun,” Schlukebir says. “He’s going to make my job a lot easier. This is the most confident I’ve been before a hunt.”

A Gold Star Family

A Gold Star designation means that a family has lost an immediate family member who died while serving in a conflict. The term originated during World War I, when families displayed service flags with a blue star for each family member fighting in the armed forces. If a family member was killed in combat, the family would replace the blue star with a gold one.

In October hunting brand Kuiu, in partnership with the Three Rangers Foundation, sponsored an antelope hunt in Trinidad, Colorado, to honor a Gold Star family. Josh and Jason Whitaker, along with their long-time business partner and hunting buddy Eric Schlukebir, were the original donors for Kuiu’s first Gold Star family hunt in 2020. They have graciously donated a hunt every year since. 

The hunt’s home base would be the isolated Hidden Lakes Ranch, which lies 13 miles east of Trinidad at the foot of Horseshoe Mesa. 

Alex, Thies, the guides, and I all traveled to Colorado to honor a hunter who is no longer with us: Army Capt. James D. Nehl, who was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division from Fort Riley, Kansas. He died Nov. 9, 2012, in Ghazni Province, Afghanistan, from wounds sustained from small arms fire while on patrol during combat operations. It was his first deployment to Afghanistan, although he had previously been deployed to Iraq. He was 37 and left behind a wife and a 2-year-old son — Alex. 

A Google search of James Nehl’s name brings up pages of results, mostly links to news stories about his death. They all provide the same basic information about his rank, age, and cause of death. 

One detail that is missing from most of these stories is that Nehl was hit when he ran into enemy fire to drag wounded Sgt. Michael Maki to safety. Maki had taken a bullet to the chest that broke four ribs and hit his left lung. Maki made it home. Nehl did not. 

Nehl was posthumously awarded a Bronze Star medal for his heroic service in combat. 

If you click on any of the news stories, you will see strings of comments. Many are random messages from grateful citizens thanking Nehl for his service, wishing his soul peaceful rest, and offering prayers for his family. 

Others are from people who knew him — friends, teachers, and men who served with him. The comments paint a picture of a quiet, kind, often funny young man.

“He was probably one of the nicest kids in the class. He was kind to everyone. I remember he helped me with math,” wrote Tammi Cruise, the president of Nehl’s graduating class. 

“Quiet guy, sincere, not a typical teenager, very disciplined,” one of Nehl’s high-school teachers told the Oregonian. “I think he was living his dream and unfortunately died his dream. He wanted to be an Army Ranger.”

Daryl Thies met Nehl when they were kids. At the time, Thies was dating Nehl’s older sister, Charlene, who later became his wife.

“When I’d already been in the Army, and he was graduating high school, [Nehl] called me and asked me for some advice about what he should be doing after school. It’s a conversation I will never forget because it was one of those I would think back and wonder if I had done something different, maybe life would be much, much different now,” Thies says. “I gave him a definite ‘yes,’ [about joining the Army] and convinced him to come do what I was doing.”

Thies and Nehl were family in more ways than one. Not only did Ties marry Nehl’s sister, making them family in the eyes of the law, but they also served together in the Army, making them brothers in arms. 

Meeting Alex 

Alex may be skilled with a rifle, but he’s far from cocky. During the hunt he was quiet, maybe a little melancholy, and did a whole lot more listening than talking. 

He eventually tells me he’s a ninth grader at Olympia High School in Washington. He keeps his answers to my questions short, usually only one or two words punctuated by shrugs. He plays soccer and rides dirt bikes. When I ask about his favorite subject in school, he jokingly answers “sleep,” with just a hint of a smile at one corner of his mouth. 

He brushes off the joke quickly and changes his answer to math. 

“He’s wicked smart,” Thies interjects. “He makes great grades. Plays four instruments.”

At his uncle’s bragging, Alex just ducks his head.

Chasing Pronghorns

The morning of Alex’s hunt, Jason Whitaker pulls up to the ranch bunkhouse and informs us that he has good news and bad news. He’s spotted a slug of a buck tending a harem of does, and they are all holed up in a creekbed just on the other side of the road. 

Schlukebir tells us that Jason is darn near impossible to impress, so this buck must be a real monster. 

Because he’s in the creek bottom, there will be plenty of cover, which is good when trying to stalk in close enough to make a good shot. The bad news is, he’s in there with a bunch of mule deer and that bottom is also full of crunchy dead leaves. 

“Trying to walk through there quietly will be like trying to tiptoe through cornflakes,” Schlukebir says. 

Jason is worried about spooking the mule deer, who will start their little foot-stomping and blow out the antelope.

“You bust one, and the jig’s up,” Jason says. He and Schlukebir make the tough decision to send only Alex in there with Jason. That means the rest of us, including Uncle Daryl and I, will wait on this side of the road.  

Once there’s a plan in place, Alex starts suiting up in the required blaze orange vest and hat. Thies starts lobbing tips at him while he’s getting ready.  

“Take your time. Slow is smooth; smooth is fast. Don’t take the shot unless you’re sure of it.”

Alex just nods as he fumbles with his vest and then loads his dad’s rifle. 

“We’re going to quietly slip up this bottom,” Jason tells Alex. “The wind is coming in gently out of the west, which is money.”

As Alex and Jason cross the road, Thies jumps up on an electrical box so he can watch them disappear into the cottonwoods. 

“It’s that big expanse of the unknown that gets to me,” Thies says from his perch. He’s trying to keep Alex’s blaze orange in sight as long as possible.  “But if I wasn’t confident with his ability, this would be much tougher.”

Once they are out of sight, there’s nothing left to do but wait. 

Hunting Buddies

“James is easy to characterize but hard to talk about for a lot of different reasons,” Thies tells me later. He had cautioned me that Alex’s dad is a raw subject for the teenager to discuss. I had noticed: When I asked Alex about his dad’s rifle, he clammed up immediately. But I wonder if it’s still a raw subject for Thies, too.

Alex was only a toddler when his father was killed in action. He only knows James Nehl through stories and photographs. Thies has told plenty of those stories. 

Thies and Nehl were Army buddies, hunting buddies, and just buddies in general.

“When we were both stationed at Fort Lewis, we spent a lot of time in the woods together hunting and fishing and just screwing off,” Thies says.

Thies was fresh from a deployment to Afghanistan when Nehl was killed. He had only been stateside a few days before heading to Judith Gap, Montana, to hunt elk and mule deer. He had been in Montana for just three hours when he got the call from his mother-in-law informing him that his best friend was gone. 

“Anything related to hunting with that boy brings up memories of his dad,” Thies says. “Hunting with Alex makes me miss him more.”

“Folks will say that a lot of things are learned behavior, but I’m telling you, Alex is the spitting image of his father. His looks, his mannerisms, and his demeanor are so much James, it’s almost eerie.” 

Big Buck Down

Soon after Alex and Jason disappear into the creek bed, a train comes rumbling across the prairie. We can feel it vibrating the ground, and it makes plenty of noise to drown out any sound the pair might be making as they move through those crunchy leaves. 

Just as everyone back at the bunkhouse is getting antsy, Schlukebir gets a text from Jason: “Got him in our sights. Too many cattle in the background.”

As long as the antelope don’t spook, Jason plans to wait it out, hoping the cattle will graze out from between them and the pronghorns foraging along the creek. 

After about another half an hour, another incoming text says they will try to move to get a better shooting angle, taking the big cows out of the equation. 

A few minutes later, we hear a single shot.

Schlukebir gets the call from Jason that the big buck is down. They’re waiting for Thies to come out before they walk up on him. Alex wants his uncle there when he first puts his hands on his antelope. 

Schlukebir, Thies, and I pile into the side-by-side and head across the creek. We spot Alex’s orange vest first, moving up the bottom toward a group of black cows. Then we see the buck, lying just on the opposite side of the stream, white belly shining against the golden brown prairie grass. He’s surrounded by a herd of cattle. Two of them almost stand on the body, staring down as we approach. They mosey off slowly as we get closer. 

The atmosphere turns electric as soon as we hop out of the side-by-side. It’s filled with fist bumps and hefty pats on the back. The men are as excited as Alex, maybe more. It’s hard to tell just how much excitement is bubbling under his typically quiet demeanor. The only thing that breaks his calm exterior is a hint of a crooked grin that slowly spreads across his face as he grips the buck’s horns. It’s a big buck with horns measuring at least 14 inches. 

Alex tells us how he belly-crawled through the cottonwoods, scooting his dad’s rifle ahead of him inch-by-inch, trying not to crackle too much through the fallen leaves.

“One doe spotted us and just looked at us for like five minutes,” Alex says. “She was giving us a serious mom stare.”

The shot Alex made was perfect. 

“If you drew a perfect picture of where to shoot an antelope, this would be it,” Schlukebir tells Alex as he wipes blood from the buck’s flank.

Jason asks Schlukebir for a rangefinder, and they range the shot at 160 yards. The buck had gone only about 10 yards from where he was standing.

Alex asks his uncle to run back to the truck to get his lucky hat. It’s the first kill he’s made without it, and he wants it for a picture. 

“Why is it your lucky hat?”

Alex shrugs. “I don’t know. I was just wearing it, and I killed a deer. I figured it was lucky, so I just kept wearing it.”

“Maybe it’s not the hat,” Schlukebir says. “Maybe the hat is like, ‘I’m on my lucky hunter today.’”

Pictures are snapped from every angle, with and without Alex’s lucky hat. Then, while the guides make quick work of quartering the animal, Alex Facetimes his grandmother. 

“She’s Alex’s biggest fan,” Thies says. “She’s the one he calls first after every successful hunt. Her living room is jam-packed with hunting photos of Alex hanging beside hunting photos of James.” 

Caping the Buck

After the hunt, we’re all back at the bunkhouse, killing time before lunch. Alex is antsy. He’s having a hard time sitting still and is running in and out of the house, trying to find something to do. He isn’t like most kids his age. I never once saw his nose buried in a phone screen. 

“Come on, Alex. Let’s go cape this buck,” Thies says to his nephew, and they head out the ranch house door and out to the shed. 

Schlukebir tells him not to worry about it, that the guides will handle the caping. He’s worried about a wayward blade nicking the hide and ruining Alex’s first antelope. 

But Thies wants the kid to learn how to cape his own animals. In his mind, the lesson is worth a potential mistake. So in the shed, Thies walks Alex through the process, explaining as he goes, slicing along the horn base, detaching the ear, and removing the eyelids. 

Then he hands Alex the knife so he can do the other side. 

“Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast,” Thies reminds him. Thies talks him through removing the ear. 

“Me and your dad had an agreement. I would bone, and he would cape,” Thies tells Alex. “He was really good at it. That’s your goal, buddy.”

When Alex gets to the eye, he hesitates before handing the knife back to his uncle. Eyelids are delicate work, and the boy isn’t quite ready for the task yet.

Later, I ask Thies about what it’s like for him to hunt with Alex now, after so many years of hunting with his father. It takes him a minute to answer, like he’s sorting through old memories. He clears his throat before he speaks. 

“I guess you just find your niche when you have a hunting buddy that you do a lot with,” Thies says. “James always caped, and I always deboned. We were more efficient that way.”

But Thies is quick to explain that he’s just trying to mentor Alex and teach him the skills necessary to be a good hunter.

“I’m less concerned about hunting when I’m out with Alex.” Thies says. “It’s more about handing down the traditions and teaching him the things that his dad would want him to know. My goal is to show him what his dad would be showing him if he were here.”

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Over dinner that night, we retell stories of the hunt and drum up memories of past hunts, sharing them with each other. There’s plenty of laughter. Even Alex is smiling, joking,  telling stories. The hunt seems to have helped break through that quiet exterior. 

“One of the things that we do when we hunt, especially when we’re successful, is we go visit his dad in the cemetery,” Thies tells me. “We just go and tell him a story about the hunt.”