Ever Been in a "Survival" Situation?

[DancesWithKnives]

Let's hear your story and what you learned from it! Even if it was only a quasi-survival situation or even if it involved only one survival skill.

Help the rest of us learn something!:D

DWK

[swamp]

this survival story is a classic

http://www.trailspace.com/blog/2008/10/08/lost-on-a-mountain-in-maine-donn-fendler.html

[Little Buck]

Okay, admittedly this wasn't a long drawn out ordeal. But, it did change the way I do things.

This past Nov. 7, I was helping a buddy look for a deer he had shot. While on the way back to the truck, I fell and ruptured my left quadriceps tendon. What the quad. tendon does is allows you to extend your lower leg at the knee joint. If it tears loose (ruptures) then you are unable to walk on that leg, lift that leg, or have any control whatsoever over it.

I was walking down a very steep hill and had stopped to take a breather. I looked to my right and saw a very well used den of some sort (probably coyotes). Then I started walking again. Here was one of my first mistakes. I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. If I had been, I would have known how stupid it was to go straight down such a steep area. Plus, I would have realized that I was walking on exposed bedrock that was covered with leaves.

The next thing that happened was as I stepped with my right foot it flew out from under me. All my weight landed on my left knee and ruptured the tendon. I hit the ground hard. I had felt a huge pop in my knee during the fall.

I immediately began assessing myself after the fall. I was not bleeding, no trauma to my head or anywhere else besides my left knee. At that point, I decapped my ML and radioed my buddy to work his way to me. I told him that I had fallen and I thought I had broken my leg.

After he got to me, we assessed my knee again. In the 5 minutes or so it had taken him to get to me it had gotten HUGE! Not good. We immediately loosened my boot to prevent any circulatory problems should the swelling spread. The clothes I was wearing were loose fitting, so I didn't think I would have any problems with them.

We decided on a plan in which my buddy would walk in front of me and move rocks/limbs/etc. out of the way and I would scoot to the bottom of the hill. It was only about 75 yards, but it was very steep. We would then have access to a logging trail that would lead us to our vehicles approximately 300 yards down the mountain.

We headed out and quickly discovered the plan would not work. In the end, we called 911. Firefighters (from my fire department), police, and rescue personnel ended up getting me out of the woods by placing me in a Stokes basket and lowering down by rope.

The injury required surgery to repair.

Here are the things I learned:
-Always have a cell phone when hunting in an area with service
-Always hunt with a buddy and have radio/phone contact with them
-Don't leave home without telling someone exactly where you'll be (especially if you don't have phone service)
-Make sure you know at least basic first aid (I'm a registered nurse and my buddy teaches CPR/first aid so we were covered)
-Go out and purchase one of the personal locator beacons (I bought a SPOT)
-Never hit the woods without a basic survival kit with you (I had nothing. If I had needed to spend the night in the woods I wouldn't have been prepared)
-Always pay close attention to the task at hand

Hope someone reads this and learns something.

LB

[DancesWithKnives]

Swamp---Yes, that's a classic. Good example of how moving around without an idea of where you are going can cause problems for rescuers.

Little Buck---Thanks. I don't have the medical training you possess but I am usually pretty well equipped. I hike alone occasionally and although I carry an ACR PLB, I should heed your warning and be more diligent about leaving word on my route and timing.

I appreciate your contribution!

DWK

[Bushman]

The one that comes to mind was when my buddy and I went up to his cabin just off Lake Superior for a long weekend. His place was way off the beaten path with only gas lights and no electricity. We had all our coolers filled with ice and food and since it was still cold outside during the early steelhead spring run, we put all our coolers outside next to the back door. Next morning all the coolers were open and some of the tops were torn off hinges and all. A black bear ate all our food and drank all the soda, but left the beer. I remember tracking the bear through the woods by the discarded food wrappers to see if he had left us anything to eat. Not a chance. We took our fishing very seriously that weekend so that we wouldn't starve. At least with the beer dehydration was avoided. I learned that you can't buy a bear proof cooler and that they don't like beer.

[DancesWithKnives]

What I've done on over a dozen lengthy wilderness river trips to Alaska and Northern Canada is to place a handful of paradicholobenzene mothballs (not the napthalene ones) on top of the coolers, then cover them with a tarp that is weighted down with rocks. I put a few more mothballs around the tarp. The bears sniff it, think it's a toxic waste dump, and walk on by. In many years of running rivers through both brown and black bear country, I've never lost a cooler. Seen many sets of bear tracks go right by them without any further investigation. Of course, I keep a lot of non-refrigerated food in cylindrical bear-resistant containers. I usually put a few mothballs around those too. They've never been touched either.

I'm really surprised that the bears didn't want the beer. They are very curious about the scent of empty beer cans---which is why I make the guys rinse them out before crushing.

I once read an account of a cabin having been ransacked by a bear and the only things left untouched were 8 cans of sauerkraut. The researcher speculated that some kraut scent was left on the containers during the canning process and the bear didn't like it. I found that hard to believe but the fact that the bear punctured every other can in the cabin lent some support to the theory.

Thanks for your story,

DWK

[Bushman]

I think that after a case of Mountain Dew having a beer was kind of repugnant to the bear. It does go to show their sense of smell is off the chart compared to ours. That or like my teen age son, he just had an aversion to Miller Lite. Same bear different weekend we found the cabin on it's own little island thanks to the local beaver population. We opened the beaver hunting season and buried the carcasses way deep. Next weekend it looked like a backhoe had been back there and everything had been exhumed by the bear. We could have saved ourselves and the bear a lot of digging.

[DancesWithKnives]

Yes, they say a bear's olfactory membrane has over 100 times the surface area of a human's.

One time many years ago a bear was pestering my camp and I decided to do a mothball test on him. I had opened a can of Stagg chili in the course of dinner. I placed the unwashed can under a plastic trash bag, weighted with some rocks. Tossed a handful of mothballs on top.

The bear wandered back into camp a few minutes later and saw the plastic bag. He got about 6 ft. from it when he turned and walked about 30 ft. across the camp spot. He sniffed the cold, unused fire ring and pulled out an old mayonnaise packet that had been opened and discarded by a previous camper. Never went back toward the mothballed chili can.

At REI they sell some ziploc-style bags that are supposed to be thousands of times less scent permeable than regular ziploc brand bags. We use them as liners for the bear-resistant food containers. I think it's a good idea to have several layers of bear defense.

DWK