Hunting ‘saved my life,’ says legally blind Kansas veteran who lost his sight in Iraq

William Murphy laughs when recalling the story behind shooting his biggest buck.

A video shows his guide telling Murphy it’s a doe, but, once led up to the deer, could feel it’s nine points.

“I had to give him a little crap,” the 48-year-old Louisburg, Kansas, man said. ‘“I was like, ‘doe my ass.’ You want to take my blind man cane? You want to borrow my guide dog?’”

Really, though, Murphy was just happy to have someone willing to guide him so he’s able to hunt. Murphy, a husband and father of two children now in their 20s, lost his eyesight shortly after coming home from serving in Iraq in 2006 when an improvised explosive device (IED) knocked him back.

He was forced to medically retire shortly after that. Losing his place in the U.S. Marines and just about all of his eyesight led him to a dark place — but hunting brought him out.

“I can honestly say hunting probably saved my life,” he said.

He didn’t hunt before becoming legally blind, but technology has enhanced his limited vision enough to hunt turkey and deer. He first caught the thrill of being in the woods after another blind veteran invited him and others to a turkey hunt in Indiana.

Murphy thought it was a joke but ended up bagging a bird and discovering a new passion.

Hunting allows him to do many things he did as a Marine.

“I got to put on camouflage, then I got to walk all quiet and stealth-like through the woods,” he said. “And then I got to basically set up a hasty ambush on a turkey. And then I got to put rounds down range, make it mean something.”

Prepared for a military life

Murphy was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky, while his father served in the U.S. Army.

The military took his family to Germany, Virginia, back to Germany and then finally to Fort Riley in Kansas, where his father ended his career.

He went to Herington middle and high school where he met his wife, Sharon Murphy — though they didn’t like each other when first meeting in middle school.

“Typical girl/boy (stuff),” she said. “He was just bugging me all the time.”

But, he grew on her.

They started dating at the end of her junior year, the end of his sophomore year.

William Murphy graduated in 1994. He always knew he would go into the military. He left for boot camp in July 1994.

The two got married just under a year later. Their daughter, Shae Murphy, was born a few years later and their son, Aidan, was born a few years after that.

Deployment and bomb attack

William Murphy had assignments in Missouri, California, Virginia and Hawaii with the Marines. He and his family moved to California when he got stationed at Camp Pendleton before Murphy was deployed in 2006 to Iraq.

Murphy worked in communications and was stationed at Al-Asad Airbase.

In July 2006, about five months into his tour in Iraq, he was called to go out and assist the towing of a broken down Humvee that had sensitive communications equipment in it.

The Marines took a few vehicles and set up a distance away from the Humvee that was abandoned in the desert. He had been on about a dozen similar calls before.

Within a couple minutes of arriving and after he and others exited their vehicles, someone set off the bomb.

“Somebody had already planted something, and whenever we got out, boom,” he said. “And luckily, no one died that day. So we all dust each other off, and we were able to carry out the plan that day. Of course, that vehicle got blown to crap.”

Murphy figures the person who detonated the bomb saw the soldiers arrive. He’s not sure why the person set the bomb off when they did and didn’t wait for them to move in closer.

“I don’t know if he got excited,” he said. “I don’t know, but I’m glad he did because that thing went boom a little early.”

He still remembers the force from the shock wave.

“I can’t compare it to anything and I hope I never have to,” he said.

He went back stateside in September. Within a couple weeks, Murphy’s vision deteriorated. He soon was declared legally blind.

Murphy was a gunnery sergeant E7 and communications chief at the time. Murphy’s commanding officer told him his time with the Marines had come to an end.

‘Hey gunny, you know a blind man can’t shoot a weapon,’” Murphy remembers his commanding officer telling him. “And I was just like, ‘Roger that, sir.”’

The Murphys moved back to Kansas and tried to figure out how to cope with the changes in their lives.

Things took a better turn in 2010 after Sharon Murphy convinced her husband to attend an eight-week rehab for blind veterans at the Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital in Illinois.

It was there that he met Lonnie Bedwell, a veteran who lost his sight in a 1997 hunting accident.

Bedwell hadn’t let a lack of sight stop him.

He’s climbed the four highest peaks, including Mount Everest in May 2023, on four continents and plans to do so on the three remaining continents, according to an online bio.

He was named one of National Geographic’s 2015 Adventurers of the Year.

Murphy also met others like Bedwell, and the group stayed in contact.

“We don’t like borders and boundaries. We like to push the envelope a little bit,” Murphy said.

Blind veterans go hunting

In 2015, Bedwell called Murphy about hunting turkeys in Indiana. Murphy thought it was a joke.

“And I go, ‘What are you talking about?’ Man, I said, ‘I know how you lost your eyesight. You trying to finish me off?’

But it wasn’t a joke.

Bedwell connected with Scott Goodman, who helped secure funding, land and guides to help six blind veterans hunt turkey at no cost.

Three of them, including Murphy, had limited vision and could use a device that mounted onto the gun and allowed them to look onto a phone screen to see where they aimed. A guide still helped direct them to finding the turkey.

The other three were completely blind.

For the men who were completely blind, the guide would use a finger on the back of their neck to guide them on target. When the tom lined up in their crosshairs, the guide would double tap the back of their neck, letting them know to shoot.

Five out of the six veterans, including Murphy, shot a turkey.

“Everything that I was taught in the Marine Corps, I got to do again. ... Everything that I loved to do in the Marine Corps, I was doing hunting,” he said. “It’s just a different way. I was hooked. I fell in love with it. I love it.”

Goodman said he prayed for a few days after the veterans left. By the end of the week, he set up Heroes New Hope Foundation which brings disabled veterans and children to Indiana to hunt and fish.

“He’s the best example of why we do what we do,” Goodman said of Murphy. “It truly changed that man.”

Murphy has since spoken at the nonprofit’s annual banquet and done events with the Wounded Warrior Project.

Lifetime hobby

Murphy came back home to Kansas after that spring hunt in Indiana as a new man.

“It gave him, not necessarily a new lease on life, but it showed him he is able to still do things that sighted people can do,” Sharon Murphy said. “If he could live out in the woods, I think he probably would. He would just need woods and a pond. He loves to fish, too.”

She said their relationship and his relationship with their children got better.

It took a few months of convincing once William Murphy got back from Indiana before Kansas granted him a hunting license, he said. Murphy had to show them that the technology exists for him to hunt successfully.

Those new technologies have also meant he has glasses he can tell to zoom in so he can see his wife and children’s faces or watch the Kansas City Chiefs. Without that zoom, he is only able to see at 4 feet what the average person can see at 200 feet, Sharon Murphy said.

Their daughter has since gone deer hunting with him but she didn’t have any success.

Sharon Murphy got her hunter’s safety license last year after her husband couldn’t find a guide to take him out for deer season. She wanted to make sure he had a guide so that it wouldn’t happen again, but he had a guide for this season.

He likes the taste of both turkey and deer, but enjoys hunting turkey more because of the noises they make. Someone in town was also patient enough to teach him how to process his own deer.

“I just have to do it with a, you know, obviously, with a sighted person,” he said. “But, you know, I love doing that.”

He’s killed five or six turkeys since then.

“I’ve never missed a bird before,” he said. “Birds go down.”

He’s also killed six does and four bucks.

He’s missed two 10-point bucks. Both times, he said, were because he had the wrong range from the guide.

“Luckily, I’ve met the right people that allow me to hunt on their land,” he said. “And, you know, the person to guide me. I’ve been lucky.”

The nine-pointer this year was the largest buck he’s shot.

The person he was hunting with shot his buck first thing in the morning on Dec. 4, which was opening day of rifle season. They dragged the buck back to the blind. About 45 minutes later, Murphy got his shot.

The buck was 40 yards. It went about 20 yards after he shot it with his .308.

“It was an awesome opening day,” he said.