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Close your eyes. What memory makes you smell, taste and feel like you're there?
For Weston Jenkins, it's a brisk October morning. He's crouched in a hut called a deer blind with his cousin TJ and uncle in south Texas. He's nine years old. The sun is not yet up, but the brush is alive. Jenkins is waiting for the right moment.
The night before, TJ, older by about six years, explained what would happen.
"He drew a whitetail on a napkin, he's like 'all right, man, you're going to want to put it right here.' And he drew the crosshair," Jenkins says. That should do the job, TJ calculated.
Outside the hut, a male deer emerges into sight.
"It was a little buck, but it was, in my eyes, the biggest buck that I'd ever seen," Weston says. "I knew it was going to be the first one that I shot."
It's that moment—cold and dark but buzzing with excitement—that defined a bond between cousins, who were more like brothers. Weston returns to this moment whenever he reflects on the movement TJ inspired.
A Sense of Purpose, Hope, Fulfillment
In 2017, while in college, Jenkins founded Disabled Outdoorsmen USA (DOUSA), a nonprofit organization that provides excursions for people with disabilities to enjoy nature—whether that's hunting, fishing, camping or Jeeping.
The idea is to make the outdoors accessible to all by providing them with the support, logistics and funds to have new adventures and savor the meditative tranquility of blue skies.
"For me, it's just kind of being in God's creation—it's untouched," Jenkins says.
If Jenkins is the force behind the operation, TJ was the heart. He passed away last year at the age of 36 after living with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Jenkins saw what living rugged under the sun meant to TJ and wanted more people to benefit.
"He outlived his life expectancy by almost 20 years," Jenkins says. "And he'd tell you it's because of the outdoors...it just gives you a sense of purpose, hope [and] fulfillment."
TJ had access to specialty equipment that allowed him to live a fulfilled life, including an off-road wheelchair, a wheelchair- accessible truck and ADA-enabled ranch house. TJ's outings also required practice, patience and creativity, especially as his disease progressed.
"They would have a beach ball under his arm, then they'd wrap almost like a bungee cord behind the headrest of his wheelchair all the way to the front of the [gun's] scope," Jenkins says. TJ's finger would rest on the trigger, and he'd sit patiently. To watch his cousin do the thing he loved most, with just enough strength to pull the light-touch trigger, Jenkins says was "unbelievable."
"I think [hunting] showed me the small things. From watching a little baby deer get born, to the conversations that you have in a deer blind with somebody, hanging out. I think the stuff that people just kind of overlook nowadays, but life is just too fast."
—Weston Jenkins
That's what makes DOUSA so impactful.
"We try to make it as easy as possible with offering the equipment, getting the logistics, having the ranches that they will have access to, and really taking all of those gaps away from them to offer just a weekend they can come and unload for a little bit and just free their mind," Jenkins says.
The hunts also provide participants with an opportunity to provide quality food for their families—an alternative to store bought-cuts they might not be able to afford. DOUSA collects the meat, boxes it up and ships it to them.
Nine years later, Jenkins has helped raise more than $2.5 million, helped nearly 290 people enjoy more than 190 trips, cultivated a base of more than 20 active volunteers, secured access to more than nine private ranches across Texas, and expanded his nonprofit to Utah, Minnesota, South Carolina and Alabama.
"There's more work to do," he says.
Jenkins wants to build a supply of accessible outdoor equipment, like wheelchairs or off-road mountain bikes, that people can rent for their own adventures. But his bigger dream is a DOUSA ranch run by people with disabilities. It would be ADA-compliant, with a fishing dock, places to sleep and onsite nurses. He's got the name already picked out: TJ Hope Ranch.
I've Been in Your Seat
For DOUSA volunteer ambassadors Larry Quintero and Tyson Dever, life turned on a dime. For Larry, it was a bullet to his spinal cord; for Dever, a distracted driver. Both had been athletes in their early 20s.
"I ended up flatlining four times that day," Dever says. "Twice on the scene, once in the helicopter, once on the operating table."
Neither let their injuries stop them from enjoying life. Quintero discovered wheelchair tennis and is now an instructor. Dever, a motivational speaker and mortgage loan officer, dove right back into his childhood passions of hunting and fishing.
"Living life paralyzed in a wheelchair, like it's a grind, right? And sometimes you just need that reset, and it's being out in nature," Dever says.
Social media connected them with Jenkins.
"We hit it off," Quintero says. "We went to a friend of mine's ranch, and we fished and we talked and I got to hear his vision. I respected it. I admired it."
Now, they speak at DOUSA events, attend and lead excursions, and answer questions from applicants—particularly those who are recently injured—helping them build confidence and reminding them what they're capable of.
Grit with an Acre-sized Heart
Quintero and Dever credit Jenkins with DOUSA's success, describing their friend of over a decade as attentive, enterprising and driven.
"He's up early and stays up late, and it's with a mission everywhere he goes," Dever says.
Dever adds, "he's the glue behind it all. You can't talk to him for five minutes without just seeing the fire and the passion that he has for this."
"Not everybody likes to hunt and fish, and that's 100% okay. We'll find something that you like to do."
—Weston Jenkins, speaking about DOUSA's mission
The program has been life-changing for veteran and athlete Jen Pahl.
"This past year has been especially difficult, but Disabled Outdoorsman USA helped me find healing by inviting me to participate in the Old Red Drum Fishing Tournament," Pahl says, aiming to catch the coastal species.
She adds, "While I didn't catch a red drum myself, I gained something just as valuable—knowledge, new friendships, unforgettable memories and a much-needed escape from the challenges of everyday life."
It's stories like these that jumpstarted Justin Witherspoon, a close friend of Jenkins, to serve on DOUSA's board of directors and fulfill its mission.
"Weston's the rare combination of relentless work ethic and real heart for people," Witherspoon says. "That combination is exactly what DOUSA needed. He doesn't just lead from the top; he shows up, puts in the work, and genuinely cares about every participant. That's what's driven DOUSA's growth, and it's why the organization simply wouldn't be what it is today without him.
A Lifelong Rancher
Jenkins is so comfortable in nature, it's a wonder he didn't grow straight out of the ground.
Besides recreation, Texas ranches provided Jenkins with a means to make a living from an early age.
On weekends in high school, he worked as a foreman for local families. He'd feed their horses, check fence lines, set snares for coyotes, clear roads and cedar trees with a saw.
"Anything that they needed a young back for, I was all in to help," he says.
His maternal grandfather, a Navy veteran who founded a local land and ranch brokerage, showed Jenkins what was possible.
"He said, 'it's a lot of work, son. It's a lot of driving. It's a lot of hard hours. You can get all the way, work a deal for two months. It dies right at the end,'" Jenkins recalls. He remembers asking his grandfather whether you could make a decent living.
"He said, 'absolutely,' and ever since he told me that, I said, well, that's what I'm doing. And I never looked back."
Nowadays, Jenkins puts roughly 90,000 miles a year on the road. He works at Texas Landmen, an offshoot of the family business, The duPerier Texas Land Man, and success has followed him.
He was inducted into the National Association of REALTORS® 30 Under 30 program in 2023 and has been named a Top 10 farm and ranch agent four years in a row by the San Antonio Business Journal. Last year, he reportedly closed 36 transactions totaling more than $111 million in gross sales.
The way he markets his properties—a fusion of pristine drone shots and close-ups of glistening creeks, wildlife and hunting action shots—reads as love letters to the outdoors, in only the way a born rancher knows how. Because to him, he's not playing a role, he's sharing his way of life and hopefully, inspiring a buyer.
In this way too, working hard and living life to the fullest, he honors TJ, who had dreamed of entering the family business.
"Just being able to go to work and have a bad day at the office is something that he would have dreamed of," Jenkins says. "So, I don't really have bad days."
Weston Jenkins of Texas Landmen in Boerne, Texas, has spent nine years organizing excursions for people with disabilities to enjoy the outdoors through camping, fishing, hunting and more.
