John Annoni isn't your stereotypical bowhunter.

John Annoni celebrates with two Camp Compass Academy students after a successful deer hunt.

Annoni grew up on the tough, inner-city streets of Allentown, Pa. His father was a heroin addict who died of an overdose. His mother lived in the projects and was involved in abusive relationships.

Under the circumstances, the odds of Annoni becoming a productive member of society were slim. The odds of him becoming a hunter were just about none.

But as he's proven time and time again, Annoni has a knack for beating long odds.

Thanks to the love and support of his grandparents, Annoni earned an education degree from Kutztown University and returned home as a middle school teacher in the Allentown School District.

And thanks to his overwhelming passion for the outdoors -- not to mention lots of helping hands along the way -- Annoni didn't just become a hunter; he became an icon within the hunting community.

As a child, Annoni found great solace in nature, which offered an escape from the constant turmoil of family life. Whether fishing for Lehigh River smallmouths or being awed by a wayward pheasant in the neighborhood junkyard, Annoni discovered a sense of peace and belonging that simply didn't exist at home. At age 11, in a small woodlot adjacent to the housing project where his mother lived, Annoni became a hunter when a gray squirrel fell to his recurve bow.

"Till this day, I can still picture the flight of that perfect arrow," Annoni recalls. "It was as if the whole world stopped moving, except for that 20-inch piece of wood.

"That one squirrel, that pest of a creature, the bird-feeder raider, the power-outage-causer, helped me experience life in a way I never could have imagined. It opened gates of sensitivity I never had known or shown before. It brought out of me the instinctive predator impulse that would stay with me and change my life forever."

Years later, Annoni realized sharing his love of the outdoors could help save students falling through the system's cracks. In 1994, he founded Camp Compass Academy, a mentoring program that uses hunting as an integral part of pointing at-risk youth toward academic and social success.