Tyler Wilson was supposed to grow three more inches in his lifetime, fill a vacancy on an award-winning trapshooting team and pick up a paycheck.

The 15-year-old from Hemple, Mo., died driving to his first “real job,” a floral/nursery business. He and his new motorcycle collided head-on with a pickup while both drivers rounded a sharp curve on Missouri Route DD near Gower.

If he’d made it, he would have received the second paycheck of his life from a job he’d started two and a half weeks before.

The teen was saving money for a winter hunting trip to Texas. An avid hunter, he shot a multitude of game, from deer to boar and from ram to turkey.

“He would shoot anything that moved,” his stepfather, Greg Kerns, said.

Dubbed an outdoorsman by anyone who knew him, Tyler also was passionate about camping, fishing, motocross races, motorcycle riding and anything else beyond four walls, including winter dips in the family pond.

His family and teachers expected him to grow up to work as a state conservation agent.

“But he said he didn’t follow all the rules for hunting, so he wasn’t sure if he should be a conservation agent,” his mother, Shelley Kerns, joked.

He was a Wranglers-cowboy-boots-wearing “country boy” who only removed his ball cap from his red head of hair to walk into church or to pray, his sister, Alyssa Wilson, 12, explained. He often slept in it.

And he was the type of guy to nearly knock her out of the way to return a $20 bill a passerby had dropped on the ground.

His FFA adviser, Chuck Wilson, recalled Tyler as a quiet, attentive teen.

“He took it all in,” the East Buchanan High School teacher said. “He didn’t talk a lot, but you know when he did speak, he spoke with passion and importance.”

An early 2009 dirt bike accident almost kept him from competing in one of his favorite FFA activities, trapshooting.

His knee injury required surgery and enough recuperation that he was set to miss a state meet in April, a shining opportunity he had looked forward to all year. Tyler begged and pleaded with his doctor and mother, who rejected the notion multiple times until relenting with the caveat that Tyler avoid any additional injury.

“In light of things, I’m glad I let him go,” she said.

He didn’t perform as well as he would’ve liked, she said, but the deal was kept and his determination impressed his teammates and advisers. He was hoping to land a spot on one of the teams that placed this fall, which would’ve been his sophomore year.

This summer was meant for hard work under blue skies and breaking in his new motorcycle. After all, he had 3 more inches to grow, according to his knee doctor’s predictions.

He boasted to his doctor that he’d completed the motorcycle safety course and then rode his 2009 Yamaha VStar 250 just two days after his second knee surgery.

“The doctor knew by then there was no stopping him,” Mrs. Kerns said.

And ride he did.

From the time he purchased the motorcycle in May to July 3, the odometer moved from 236 miles to 1,100 miles.

More than 1,000 people gathered to remember him earlier this week during his visitation.

Alyson E. Raletz can be reached

at alysonraletz@npgco.com.