I was just reading some of the posts on the thread I started on Man vs Wild. And was just wondering if any of you have ever had any scary search and rescue or survival stories of your own? I know many of you are hunters and there is always a good hunting story to tell! Lady Di
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IF IT DOESN'T GET HOT..IT DOESN'T HAVE ENOUGH FIREPOWER....DBL TAPP IS NOT DANCING..
Lets see, I remember one time seeing a huge badger and a WWII German tank while deer hunting. I did one time get have a fawn walk up to within about five feet of me. I was with my Dad deer hunting, sitting behind a few shrubs when we kept hearing something over our shoulder. He told me to turn around and see what it was. When I did I couldn't believe my eyes. It started stomping its front foot, so I started punching the ground. It would raise its head, I'd raise mine. Lower its head, I'd lower mine. This went on for a good 15 minutes before it popped that tail up and ran back up in the woods. We hadn't realized it, but its mother was just about 25-35 feet from us while all this was going on.
I was thrown into a fast flowing flooded creek once and had to hang onto a branch for dear life and crawl through waist deep thorn bushes. Looked like I'd been clawed by a feral cat. Wasn't hurt otherwise. Hydrodynamic instincts kicked in and I didn't realize until afterwards what I'd gone through. Not sure really how much danger I was in, but I punched the numbers afterwards and saw what kinds of forces I was up against.
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Trust is earned, not... GIVEN away. - Worf
Hehe, one time, at Boy Scout camp..... I walked into the latrene about 3:00am to a huge Wolf spider on the toilet seat. I didn't have to go to the bathroom for a LONG LONG time. It's also not fun waking up to a skunks rump about a foot from your face.
I was about 14 or 15 years old. My mom and I had a little 12-foot V-Hull aluminum fishing boat. We went up to Wellington Lake near Bailey, CO. It was late october October and it had snowed the night before.
My cousin (who is about 15 years older than me) and his buddy came up also. They were fishing in a little flat-bottom, plastic 12-foot bass boat.
The gas motor on his boat was about a 2.5 HP, and ours was maybe 3.5.
So, we loaded up our boats...lunch cooler, tackle boxes, fishing poles, worms, coats, hats, the boat oars (the kind that have a little hinge & slide into the little slots on the side of the boat), etc.... The air wasn't so cold that you had to wear gloves and a heavy coat, but it was bright, sunny, and clear. It was maybe 58 degrees out on the water, but the sun beat down & reflected off the water & kept you fairly warm.
My cousin and his buddy went off to one side of the lake and we stayed on the opposite side.
Well, my mom was getting up to move around and when she went to sit down, she missed the chair and fell backward over the edge of the boat into the water. In a state of panic, her legs caught the edge of the boat and capsized the whole thing. I was goofing with the motor one second and the next thing I knew, I was a !!!! floatie in a fricken cold !!! water.
My mom came up, trying to hold the side of the boat, to not much of an avail. By the way, she isn't much of a swimmer. We both had life jackets on though.
I started calling to my cousin. "DAAAVE!!! DAVE!!! DAAAVE!" Luckily sound travels pretty good across the water.
My mom was splashing around in a panic trying to hold onto the boat, i was just kinda treading water next to it. I was too shocked by what just happened to be cold.
I could see my cousin across the water jumping around his boat, starting up the little 2.5hp motor and blaring it. It took maybe 3-5 minutes for him to get to us.
When he gets there, my mom is still panicing, she is trying to climb into his boat. It starts to sway back & forth, tipping in the water. I'm holding onto the side & yell out! "No, you'r going to flip their boat over too. Drag us to shore" I told my cousin.
So there we are, being drug through the 50 degree water along-side a boat like some kind of dingleberry.
We finally get to shore and we are dragging our wet asses out of the water, some car pulls up on the road, apparently seeing what happened. He was getting some towels out of the trunk of his car & yelled down at us: "You guys need some help?" I waved & yelled up at him. "No thanks, we always swim here." (I am dead serious! and man I laugh about that now!)
My cousin and his buddy turned around & went & drug our boat & what he could find back.
"It looked like a daamn plane wreck out there, SH*T floating around everywhere" he exclaimed.
We flipped the boat, drained the water, and they drug us back to our camp across the lake. My mom's face was ghost white. Not from the cold water, but from worrying that it was going to happen again. I was kinda laughing.
We went into our old '76 popup coleman camper and roasted some digits over the open flame ofthe built-in stove, lol.
We ended up losing only 1 thing. My moms Eddie Bauer Hat (go figure...the only thing you would expect to float, being made out of nylon/plastic) Everything else was salvaged. The oars were stuck in their holes, I don't know how they didn't slide out. The fishing poles hooked their lines on the oars. The tackle box got stuck in the vacuum beneath the boat when it capsized. They couldn't flip it in the water, so they drug the boat back ashore upside down. the tackle box sunk immediately when I flipped it over in about 2.5 feet of water. We were able to get it from there. The motor...well I twisted those mounts down tight...that was a $450 motor, glad it didn't slide off. I later gave it a tune up & it ran like a charm again. The little styrofoam worm containers were floating around the boat.
I guess the only other thing we lost was my moms ability to ride in a small fishing boat. We never went fishing in that little aluminum boat again...I don't blame her.
Anyhow, it was definitely an adventure.
To this day, my cousin still gives us heck about it. "I was trying to fish and I gotta play Baywatch: Search & Rescue." HAH! Still makes me laugh.
At field camp in Cuba NM this girl in our group put her foot down and then heard a very slow rattle. she looked down and saw a 3 foot rattler near her. She jumped straight up and ran screaming.
__________________ Commen Sense and Critical Thinking are an absolute joke in today's society. Yes I am talking to you!
As a young man entering the working world, working at small full service gas stations I had a shotgun put to my belly, a pistol to my head and stabbed. To heck with that kind of work.
A scouting Story, as an adult leader, Summer Camp, Buffalo Trails Scout Ranch in the scenic Davis Mountains of Texas. Don (RIP) and myself and 8 young scouts hiked to the Notch. "The Notch" a series of deep cold water pools and a cliffs suitable for diving. Don's idea was for the boys to count their steps and then determine how far they traveled and find their location on the map. Hmm? Interesting? This worked for the first part of the trail. The straight part. We got into zigzagging across the creek and some switch backs. We proably went a mile an half. Don then wanted us to go down this canyon. I told him no. This is not the right canyon. He was perplexed. But he had counted his foot steps. Don was getting worried quick. He actually paniced. He suggested we step away from the boys trying not to alarm them that we where lost. I had never seen Don panic. He was sweating. His face getting red. His eyes bugging out. Clearly upset.
I tried to calm him down. convince him . Nope.
"OK." "There's two reasons we are not where you think we are." First reson, pointing to the map showing him the close topo lines representing the hill behind us. Then pointed to the spaced topo lines representing the hill to the other side. Ol' Don was getting more aggitated. "See those 3 peaks to the west those are the 3 little round circles on the map" By this time I thought Don was going to punch me out. He was panicing.
"Don." I told him, "the second reason we are not where you think we are is, (short pause), I was here last year."
It's hard to describe Don's facial expression. He went from a bushy-haired wild-eyed frantic demon posessed man to a calm relaxed indiviual within 3 seconds. That was just plain remarkable.
Don and I went on to be good freinds and lead many scout outing and functions.
Now for the survival story.
Well ol' Don battled cancer for 3 years after being givin 1 year to live.
Everybody, leave those cigerettes alone!
He was just 53 and two sons in college. Ahh!
Don K.. A quailty guy.
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Guns and cameras don't mix
Last edited by Full MeTal Jack; 12-01-2006 at 11:53 PM.
First one was on December 29th, 1991, just after I had turned 10. (Yeah, I know that dates me, and yes, my birthday is later this month) Well, I was with my family up at Ski Acres in Snoqualmie Pass and had been using an inner tube on the inner tube hill they have there. It's about 100 feet high and angled about 45 degrees. There were about 8 lanes to go down and each one had a little 'hole' in the middle where they'd been worn down, sometimes to the dirt. Each lane had been packed down to near-ice, as snow usually does. So my father tells me it's the last run of the day and I start down one lane, but for some reason, my tube goes over to another lane and hits the center hole, pops out from under me and I go tumbling 60 feet down the hill. Fortunately, a ski patrolman on a snowmobile saw me from a cross country ski trail at the bottom of the hill and came to help. He got me put on a sled and snowmobiled me to the lodge, where the doctor said the pain in my leg was just muscle spasms, but my mom (a nurse of 20+ years at the time) insisted that I be taken to Children's Hospital for an X-ray. I had a ride in an ambulance and the driver even turned on the lights for me.
As an aside, they got a call on the way for a Code ## (I don't know the number) and my mom asked what that was (she rode along) and the driver said that was the code to pick up pizza for the guys back at the station. LOL Okay, back to the story.
So, I get to Children's and they X-ray it to find out I have a spiral fracture of my right femur, hardest way to break a bone and the largest bone in the body. The inside point could have easily moved over, puncturned my femoral artery and I would've bled to death before they ever got me to the lodge. They end up giving me Local anesthetic and use a hand-crank drill to put a pin through my leg from left to right. They take me over to X-ray only to find that, because of the break, the bone wasn't exactly where it should have been and he skitched the top of the bone. They had to take me back, pull out the pin, and put it back in lower. I then spent a month on my back in traction and another month in a body cast.
That was just the first one.
Then there's the time I went out to the Olympic Mountains in February ALONE to visit the Sulfur Hot Springs. These springs used to be part of a resort, but that was back in the 50's and 60's, I believe. The National Parks system doesn't put it on the map, but there is a trail head and information about it. They essentially want to make sure you realize that they don't keep up the trail and that you're responsible for anything that happens.
So, I head on up (it's uphilll all the way in) and after going about halfway, I get to where there's snow still on the ground. It's getting to about 4:30-5:00'ish at this point. There used to be a dirt trail straight up there and one little bridge, but it appeared that a run-off had washed away the trail down about 40 feet and 50 feet across, but there had been a trail down to a little log and rope-rail near the bottom that could be traversed, with fast run-off water going under.
I finally get up to the camping/springs area and it's rather dim with a light cloud cover. Being a former boy scout, I had prepared for if I had gotten stranded up there, as I'd intended for it to be a day-hike. I brought a sleeping bag and one-man tent (said two-man, but they must be pigmies), which I set up in a clearing, knowing that it would be dark by the time I got back to that log crossing. So I went down to the springs, checked the water with my fingers, which felt warm-ish, changed into swimsuit and stepped into the water. For the first 6 inches, it was warm, then my foot hit the cold water. I pulled my foot out and said to myself "Okay, I went in.", dried off my foot with a towel, changed, and went back to camp. Feeling rather pleased with myself for being prepared with tent and sleeping bag, I layed down to bed with my rolled-up towel as my pillow. What I didn't realize was that the ground was darn cold and I had brought a summer sleeping bag. I would be laying on one side and it would get cold from the ground, so I'd turn to my other side and within 2 seconds, it was just as cold! I put on my second pair of socks, as I brought them in case my first pair were wet or sweaty.
It got to where I couldn't feel my toes and I was shaking off and on. Off about 25 yards from me, I think there was a couple in another tent, as I could see their light when I looked out of my tent. Then it started to rain. My tent was nylon and water-proof, but the extra humidity didn't help my chill. I would kind of sleep, every so often looking at the East side of the tent for any trace of light. I could never fully get to sleep because I was so cold. Once I looked up at the side of the tent and saw that it was slightly lighter than the base of the tent, I got up and packed-up, toes still numb. I started hiking out and back down at the log bridge, I could start seeing through the trees across the 150-200 yard wide valley (at my elevation) where there was mist in the bottom and clear sky up above. The mountains around me were all around 1000 feet higher than me and as I got to where the snow was starting to go away, the sun peeked up over one of the mountains off to the east, sending rays of light into the valley. I made it back to my car and cranked up the heat with my shoes off, to where I could feel my toes again, then went into Sequim (pronounced Squim) and had a hearty breakfast at the Highway 101 Diner.
I have to say the best part of that whole trip was leaving! Ha!
Since I Was On The Subject!!!! 
This is not the right canyon. He was perplexed. 
But he had counted his foot steps. Don was getting worried quick. 
He actually paniced. He suggested we step away from the boys trying not to alarm them that we where lost. I had never seen Don panic. He was sweating. His face getting red. His eyes bugging out. Clearly upset. 
A quailty guy.
to visit the Sulfur Hot Springs. These springs used to be part of a resort, but that was back in the 50's and 60's, I believe. The National Parks system doesn't put it on the map, but there is a trail head and information about it. They essentially want to make sure you realize that they don't keep up the trail and that you're responsible for anything that happens.
