A girl, a gun, a 12-point buck

Haley MAGGINI never imagined a wilderness so beautiful, so alive. The sage-covered Alabama countryside seemed to span forever as she sat in her tree stand, hidden from view, exhilarated and in awe as she watched many large deer roaming the landscape.

An ailing girl who cherishes trips beyond city limits and hospitals, she found her field of dreams during a three-day hunting adventure. On the final afternoon, her patience paid off. A 12-point buck wandered into her crosshairs. She began to shake as adrenaline coursed through her veins. She pulled the trigger, a shot rang out, the animal fell. Hers was the rare feeling of triumph; the dream of bagging a trophy-size whitetail buck had been realized.

“It was really cool,” she recalls, with all the enthusiasm you might expect from a 13-year-old. “The deer were just everywhere. And they weren’t like the little blacktail out here [in California]. They were all huge. I wanted to shoot the first one I saw.”

Haley, a vivacious, brown-haired eighth-grader who lives in Carmel, loves to shoot and recently discovered hunting to be an ideal diversion from the burdens of life. She suffers from aplastic anemia, a potentially deadly disease that occurs when the bone marrow stops producing enough blood cells.

She undergoes monthly blood transfusions, and the threat of dying from hemorrhages is ever present. She suffers extreme bouts of fatigue, plus headaches, fevers and bruises. The only cure is a bone-marrow transplant, but a matching donor is required and there are none among her relatives; the search for a donor may never be fulfilled.

Meanwhile, she wants to make the most of a life that her dad says should last 30 more years -- but when she heard this, she shot back, defiantly, “another 40 years!”

Haley can’t do most of the things she would like to do with others her age -- run around on the playground, go snowboarding, in-line skating or skateboarding -- because of her condition. Instead, she mostly stays home, where she is schooled by her parents.

She likes to draw and loves playing with her cats and dogs, including her latest treasure, a Chihuahua puppy named Isabel. She shoots at the target range with a small-caliber Remington rifle that has been customized to reduce its kick. Last year, she harvested her first blacktail buck. She had no misgivings about bringing to a premature end the life of so majestic an animal. Fresh venison would be served on the Maggini dinner table for the next several days.

Greg Maggini explains that going afield is therapeutic for his daughter. He said the harvesting of an animal is simply the culmination of an adventure that is about much more than the mere act of pulling a trigger. “We are animal lovers,” he said, “and we use every bit of the deer. The kids even wanted to make gloves out of the leather.”

Haley has no qualms about hunting. “I don’t really think about the individual animal,” she said. “And besides, I don’t think they really feel anything because it usually happens so fast.”

Such explanations are never necessary in rural Alabama, she is quick to point out. “Everybody has guns and trucks. They weren’t staring at us like they were in San Jose, when we walked into the airport with our gun cases.”

She was one of two girls among 11 hunters in a recent Life Hunt, run by the Buckmasters American Deer Foundation. She was so nervous that she wanted to call the trip off.

The hunters ranged in age from 11 to 59. Several suffered from cystic fibrosis. One was being treated for spinal tumors, another was a double amputee, another a quadriplegic. All hunted for three days with volunteer guides and shared campfire time with such celebrities as Troy Lee Gentry, of the Montgomery Gentry country music duo, and comedian Jeff Foxworthy.

Haley and another girl outperformed the boys and men at the practice range, guide Lee Robinson says. In the end, all hunters bagged at least one deer, some getting more help than others from volunteers. The event took place on Jimmy Hinton’s 12,000-acre Sedgefield Plantation and will air on July 3 on the Outdoor Life Network.

Haley’s buck, which weighed 185 pounds, was the biggest, and she was mighty proud of the fact that it was taken down with a clean shot through the heart and lung -- from an impressive distance of about 150 yards.

“That’s not the way I heard it,” Robinson says with a laugh. “I heard that she was shaking pretty good and wasn’t sure she could even get the shot off, and that her guide had to hold her steady so she could shoot. But she got her deer, and that’s what it’s all about.”

That’s part of it, anyway.

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To e-mail Pete Thomas or read his previous Fair Game columns, go to latimes.com/petethomas.