Lost Hunter

The following is an article from today's Bend (Oregon) Bulletin newspaper.

"A Prineville man spent three nights and four days in the Ochoco National Forest miles away from his camp until another hunter rescued him Sunday afternoon.

Alan Hewitt, 48, of Prineville, set out to elk hunt for more than a week. He broke camp on Monday, Nov. 22. On Thanksgiving Day, the horse he was riding slipped and fell. The horse was injured, and so was Hewitt. The retired Marine slipped his dislocated shoulder back into place and set out to find the main road. His goal, according to his wife, was to get there before hunting season ended and all the other hunters left the forest."

The fellow is still in the hospital.

Right now, no one knows what kind of gear he was carrying to keep himself alive.

The rest of the article can be found at:

www.outdoorquest.biz

All the best, Blake

If there is a follow up article, please post it. Encourage Hewitt to chronicle the hunt. See if a good reporter could prompt him to second guess his mistakes.

I am a firm believer that there are two variables that often comes up in back country tragedies.

1. GRAVITY – Gravity is the number one threat in the backcountry. In this particular case, I get off the horse on steep or slippery grades. Feed the reins thru a 4’ piece of 1” heavy wall pvc pipe to make sure you have some warning if the horse tries to run you over.
2. ELIMINATE SEARCH – Eliminate search out of the “Search & Rescue” equation. A PLB would have had Hewett back to town the same day.

* My dad was a DVM for 33 years. His favorite saying was – “Everyone should have a horse. It is a great way store meat without refrigeration. Just don’t ever get on one.”

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

in my life i've only had four up-close and personal experiences with horses. all turned out poorly for me.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

and coming from a vet who would know!

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Okay, continuing the thread hijack: I confess that my opinion on horses mirrors those above -- i.e., best appreciated in a nice gravy with a bottle of Bordeaux.

My DW finds my opinions appalling/barbaric. But I earned them honestly: when I was six, old Duke (miserable old bugger, a draft horse, could open any gate with his teeth) stood on my foot as I was moving his picket and refused to move. Oh, I can taste that gravy.

P.S., Glad the hunter got out alive. Anybody who can pop a dislocated shoulder back into place is one tough bird.

Continued threadjack: I had a miserable old nag bite down on my shoulder when I was five. I didn't think about how to react, I just turned my head, got a mouthful of the edge of her nostril, and bit back. She let go with a snort, and jumped away. If she didn't like me before, she really didn't care for me afterwards...

It is interesting the actions and the manors that people get when they are hypothermic. When I took my last WEMT class it was at SOLO in North Conway NH, there founder Frank Hubbell is an expert at hypothermia and the effects.

I had once herd of a man who tested someone for Hypothermia with a snicker bar. When he gave the sinkers bar to the person who he thought was hypothermic, the hypothermic man broke down in tears over the fact he couldn't open it. My friend opened the bar for him and started Hypothermia treatment immediately. On the note of Hypothermia and SOLO one of the required items for there survival/EMS kits is instant JELLO (NOT the sugar free kind). It appears that Instant JELLO has all the necessary nurturance, carbs and the such to help a person recover from hypothermia quickly.
(Disclaimer, I AM a graduate from SOLO and I do encourage anyone who can to attend there classes, but I have no affiliation with JELLO or General Mills.)

During a SAR conference a class on analyzing people’s actions they had photos of a hunter who died of hypothermia. In the final hours his core temp dropped so much that he felt hot. He was found face down in a river taking off his belt.

So the fact that the hunter in the story was waving away the guy who found him is not surprising. He was very lucky.

ON a side note, I like horses and am glad that they were also rescued

Masterful understatement. Repeated dislocation can stretch the connective tissue to some degree, but a dislocated shoulder often incapacitates and often requires lots of drugs and a couple of big orthopedists to "slip back into place". This is a tough guy.

+1 on the anti-equine threadjack. My old man was also a vet, so I got to hold the horse while he did unspeakable things to them, which unspeakables the horse generally attempted to pass along to me. I believe that the reason the cowboys carried revolvers was so that they could shoot misbehaving horses. The historical record suggests that this happened much more frequently than high noon walkdowns

My first summer in the NPS, I rode a horse almost daily on fire patrol and used fire mules while responding to back country fires. I quickly found out that I was a hiker, not a rider. The horse is just one more way to come to grief while out in the woods. The same could be said for my bicycle, but at least it doesn't need to be fed.

Fortunately, having a horse with you provides a ready source of bait with which to distract the predator, as well as a fairly bullet-resistant cadaver to hide behind, if bandits attack, and a cozy body cavity into which to crawl if the temperature suddenly drops. These solutions pretty much preclude the survival of the horse, an added bonus.Useful critters, particularly after they canter off this mortal coil.

what do you use to remove coffee from the monitor and keyboard?

What is it with us? Aren't there any horse lovers on this forum? I know a few who would be livid at these comments...

Knowledge will create more horse lovers.

The meat has almost no fat. On a grill is must be continuously basted. It does VERY well in a WAK with any type of oil. It is best with BFM (Balanced Food Mix). Cook in a dutch oven or a crock-pot with seasoning. Your table mates will love your equestrian creation.

"Fortunately, having a horse with you provides a ready source of bait with which to distract the predator..."

Not necessarily. Horses are said to constantly remind each other that if a large predator approaches, dump the human and run. You don't have to be a racehorse, you just have to be faster than the human, which is usually no problem.

Sue

Well, my sister in law is a horse person. She would roll over in her grave if she read this, and if she were dead.

Don't forget Salami,The real McCoy Salami is Equine based!;)

Hijacked? Such a harsh word. Can any of us know at the first step, precisely where a path will lead us, or at the first post, precisely how a thread will develop? Is a thread less valid because its header has no relation to its content? How often does this happen to threads not deemed 'hijacked'

Could we not call it a thread that was 're-purposed', or 'laterally explored'? In this case, perhaps the thread was 'rustled'. (“Sheriff, them varmints from the other side of the valley done rustled our thread agin-let's get a posse together, and head em off at the third paragraph...”).

Each newly opened thread is as a fledgling bird, nudged from the nest-it may plummet to the ground, never to rise, or it may find its wings, soaring into the clouds. It may perish at the hands of a raptor, or live to perch on the shoulder of a noble statesman's statue, and leave its small deposit of respect thereon.
Think not of a thread as hijacked, but rather exalted in a new and un-dreamt of manner.