Lived and written by Richard Lantsberry

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I am writing this story for those young hunters who go hunting in the big woods, not knowing what they might be up against. These people may have saved all their small change for a year to help pay for their hunting trip. I am talking to the first and second year deer hunters who go out hunting in a tent, home-made camper trailer, or a camper on the bed of a truck, or even spend a few nights in the back of an SUV.

My advice is to get a good sleeping bag and use kerosene or electric heat…because it could save your life! Using propane or white gas, not vented correctly will kill you. My own brother-in-law found a father and son dead, in Florida, using the wrong fuel in a tent with poor ventilation.

We had a four inch duct in our roof, and still had poor ventilation. Make sure you have cross ventilation, top and bottom in your camper. Never hunt the big woods alone, it is too dangerous. Always hunt with a partner and have a system of safety worked out. If you get separated, when you recognize you are lost, stop and sit down. Wait for your buddy’s shots from camp. He will use this technique to help you find your way back, if you are not back by dark. In some remote areas, a cell phone will not work.

Enjoy my true story!

“Winter Hunting”

“Wake up, Dick. Dick, wake up!” My wife was saying as she woke me up at 5:00 a.m. on Saturday, December 2, 1961. I was going on a hunting trip. I was excited and she knew it. She stood with a funny little grin on her face, watching as I raced around our apartment, checking and making sure that I didn’t leave anything behind. I telephoned Bob Wise, my buddy. He was going to be my hunting partner on this trip.

Bob lived in a little town called Grafton, Ohio. We lived about 10 miles from one another and we had known each other for about fifteen years. We worked for the same construction company during the winter of 1960, putting service gas lines in new homes that were being built in Brunswick, Ohio. We worked outside all day long, that winter. When the temperature would get to be ten degrees, we were given permission to stop working because it was too cold to handle the 1¼ steel pipes that we worked with on the job. Both Bob and I were in good shape. At the time, I was twenty-five years old, stood 5’11” and weighed about 180lbs. Bob was twenty-one and a little smaller than I was. We had to work hard to keep our jobs, and that kept us in good physical condition.

My original hunting buddy couldn’t afford to go on the hunting trip that year. He had an addition to his family, a baby girl. So, I needed a new partner to share the expenses…I bumped into Bob at a local turkey shoot. When I asked him if he’d take me up on my offer to go deer hunting, he jumped at the invitation.

Bob didn’t have a high-powered rifle, but I loaned him one of mine. This was going to be the first time Bob had ever hunted in the big woods. For me, I had been a hunter since I was 11 years old. My mother bought me a 4-10 gauge shot gun for hunting rabbits and other small game in Ohio. This was going to be my second year deer hunting in the big woods of Pennsylvania. The only thing that I was concerned about was making sure that Bob didn’t get lost. I had planned on keeping a real close eye on him. I knew everything else would be just fine. I promised him the hunt of a lifetime…and that’s exactly what it was. It was a hunt that we both would never forget.

Bob’s telephone rang many times before he finally answered his phone. I talked only for a few minutes because I was just making sure he was fully awake. Kissing my wife, of only eight months, good-bye in the doorway, I told her that I would call her on Wednesday evening to let her know how we were doing.

As I was driving down the road to Bob’s house, I felt good…real good! In fact, I was feeling quite proud of my little homemade outfit. I couldn’t wait to get to Somerset, Pennsylvania. My outfit consisted of a 1956 Ford ½ ton pick-up truck with a portable cabin on the back. The cabin was six feet high and eight feet long. It slept two. Four men could load or unload it onto the truck. It had white, aluminum siding and was heavily insulated. It was a sharp outfit for deer camp.

I picked up Bob and we began our 150 mile journey to Somerset, P.A. We got our hunting licenses at the court house and then we headed to White Horse Mountain, where we were going to hunt. After making camp, we decided to explore and look for signs of deer. We drove around the country roads that evening, spot lighting deer. After seeing a few, we drove back to our camping area and went to bed.

The next day, being Sunday, December 3^rd, we just roamed around the mountain side looking for spots to hunt the next day. On Monday, December 4^th, we woke up about 5:30 a.m. and we heard hunters walking by our cabin. We ate breakfast in a hurry, got our guns and began to walk through the woods, to our deer stands.

Bob was carrying my 30 British Infield with open sites. I had my 30-30 Marlin Carbine with a 4 power scope. The hunting was lousy. There were too many hunters in the woods that day, so that evening we decided to hunt in a different location. We pushed further north, heading for the same spot where I had hunted the previous year. I figured that it was about 150 miles further and just 17 miles north of a little town called Renova. We reached our new hunting spot about midnight. I knew it was the same spot on Dehass Road, because the markings I put on the trees the previous year were still in plain view.

We were two tired hunters that crawled into bed that night. We saw a lot of deer on Tuesday, but unfortunately, all were does. Wednesday was pretty much the same, except Bob and I got separated. I was so concerned about losing him that I was the one who ended up getting lost.

We were walking about 60 yards apart, very slowly. We came to a flat part of the woods that was much thicker. I lost sight of Bob, who was on my left side. I kept walking. I figured the truck was about 300 yards ahead of us. It was late in the afternoon and we didn’t have much daylight left. I yelled for Bob, but no answer. I called again, but still no answer. “Where the hell is he?” I thought. I kept walking, hoping in no time I would see my truck. After walking for a while and not seeing Bob or my camper, I finally realized that I was lost.

Everything changed. I went from the confident hunter stalking through the woods, to a scared hunter. I fired my gun 3 times fast to signal Bob, but he didn’t reply. It was starting to get dark and there wasn’t a sound in the woods to locate a direction as to where the road was. The area was thick with three foot high green Laurel bushes. I could be twenty feet from Dehass road and I wouldn’t have even known it, nor could I see it.

I began to question myself as to why I chose such a remote place to hunt. I was starting to ask myself dumb questions! I remembered that I picked this location out of a map the year before, State Route 144, between Renova and Black Moshannon Sproul State Forest. We were camped on Dehass Road, about five miles off Route 144. I knew that I was half way between Renova and Moshannon.

There were no houses, no trains, no traffic, and no noise to get a sense of direction. All I saw were woods within hills and valleys. The woods were full of trees and a few deer camps, which I had not seen until now. I noticed the driveway off the black top road while I was walking. There were no driveways off of Dehass Road and it was a gravel road. I kept thinking, “Where the hell is everybody?” All day long I had seen hunters walking around the woods. “Where did they all go?” I hoped somebody would hear my calls for help.

In every direction I looked, the woods looked the same. I didn’t see any familiar landmarks to help me recognize where I was. I remembered that we had parked on Dehass Road in a stand of hard oak trees. There was a stand of about twenty pine trees next to our camper. This was a great landmark, but I couldn’t find them.

I also remembered that every time I left the camper, I would head west with the sun to my back. I would walk by large rocks, about 250 yards west of the camper, which was another good landmark. I couldn’t find that either!  I was starting to become afraid. I don’t like the woods, at night, alone. I was carrying a flashlight, but it was an awful small one. I started to take stock in what I had with me. I had dry matches, a small flashlight, a small hatchet, and my 30-30 rifle with plenty of bullets. I was getting very nervous.

All of a sudden, I noticed it was getting clear ahead, with not so many trees. When I reached the clearing, I was on a small ridge. When I looked down in the valley, I could see a light from a cabin. “Thank God!” I said aloud. I walked straight for the light hollering and firing my gun. When I reached the cabin, the hunters were outside waiting and wanted to know what was wrong with me. I told them that I was lost. They told me that it was a very good thing that I saw their cabin, because the direction that I was going in would take me 40 miles before I’d find the next crossroad.

The guidance that they gave me was to follow their driveway to a sharp turn, continue straight through the woods; about 100 yards and then I would hit Dehass Road. As I walked down the driveway, I was getting madder by the minute. “Why wouldn’t those guys answer my rifle shots? I was lost and they knew it, but they were not about to help me!” If I had missed their cabin, I could have died alone in the woods.

Every once in awhile, a hunter does get lost in the woods and starts to panic. When they find him, they find his hat, then his gloves, his portable hunting seat, and then the hunter at the bottom of a high wall. He panicked and fell to his death. I kept thinking this is an awful way to die. Then all of a sudden I saw a glimmer of hope as I had reached Dehass Road.  I turned left and there was my camper.

I could see Bob was waiting outside the camper talking to two other hunters, who had been passing by our truck on their way to their camp. I had planned to ball him out for not answering my gun shots, but thought I better not. I was so glad to see him! I was supposed to call my wife that night from town, but the nearest town was 17 miles away. The narrow Dehass Road was getting slippery and I figured the black top road going to Renova would be much worse. I decided not to risk the ride and call her on Thursday instead. It would be just one day later than what I had told my wife. The weather was getting bad, colder with a lot of wind. The wind actually sounded scary, blowing through the big pine trees.

We went to bed with high expectations that surely our luck would change. We had not seen a buck that we could shoot. I had been lost for a couple of hours in the woods, and I did make it back to camp. I was hoping our luck would change and Thursday would be our day!

On Thursday, December 7^th, I woke up shaking and out of control. It felt like the whole bed was shaking. I could not stop shivering! I was cold, so very cold. I was shocked to see both of my hands in the air above my head, reaching for something, but I didn’t know what. The camper was full of kerosene fumes. I pulled the curtain off the wall and saw that the window was open. It was open so fresh air would come into our cabin and we would not be asphyxiated from our heater. I tried to close the window with no success. The pain in my fingers and feet was unbearable. The rest of my body was okay, but it felt like my fingers and toes were going to explode from my body.

There was a strong kerosene odor in the camper; the bed felt different as if I had more room than usual. I looked down at the foot of my bed, but Bob was not there. We slept head to foot for more room and better sleeping. Then I saw him. He was lying on the floor curled up in a blanket. I noticed that my own blankets were heaped in a pile beside me. I called to him, “Wake up, Bob. Bob, wake up!” “Christ, we are freezing!” I said to myself.

I laid still for awhile trying to clear my head and figure out what was happening. I questioned why was Bob on the floor? How did he get there? How long had he been there? And, why was my camper full of these terrible fumes? All these questions were racing through my mind.

When I moved my legs, I realized that I had to urinate. I figured that I could hold it until I reached the door, but I was wrong. My stomach was swollen and my bladder was partly frozen. Every time I strained to sit up, the pressure would increase. Finally, I couldn’t hold it any longer. When I strained to sit up, I wet the bed. As I struggled to get out of bed, I blacked out.

I woke up sometime later. It seemed as if I was glued to my bed. I couldn’t move. I just laid there. My eyes were open and I just stared at the ceiling. I could actually see ice crystals forming on the ceiling. I tried to move but I couldn’t. Everything was slowing down for me. I was slowly looking around and I saw Bob. It seemed like hours before I could drop one foot off the edge of the bed and slowly get up. Bob was lying in the center of the camper on the floor with his blankets heaped beside him.

I had to lean against the wall to keep myself in a sitting position. I noticed that my hands were frozen like claws, with no feeling in my fingers. My fingers were stiff and I could barely move them. My feet were in the same condition, no feeling. They felt like blocks of wood. What was happening to us?

I sat there for a long time trying to get my brain to work. I couldn’t comprehend what was happening to us. Everything was strange to me. How did this happen? How did we get into this situation?

Suddenly a drop of water hit me on the head. I looked up and saw drops of water coming from the ceiling where moisture was gathering. I thought where was the heat? That is when I noticed that our heater wasn’t working. It had gone out. Oh well, I thought, all I had to do was go over and light it. It took all my strength and effort to get into a standing position.

When I stood up, I felt a little wobbly. Bob was lying between the heater and me. I grabbed hold of the cabinet and started to step over him when I lost my balance and fell on his chest. He let out a grunt and opened his eyes and just stared at me. I apologized, but he didn’t reply. Bob just closed his eyes and fell back into unconsciousness.

I slid off his body and crawled on my hands and knees over to the heater. It was a kerosene heater, the kind that you pumped pressure into, like a lantern. It had a mantle and a big round reflector that reflected the heat. It was a very good heater and it had always worked fine for me, up until now.

I tried to open the shut off valve, but my fingers wouldn’t respond for me. They were too cold and too stiff. I cupped my hands and started to exhale my warm breath into them. I even played patty-cake for awhile, but nothing helped. My fingers were too stiff to turn the button like knob on the shut off valve.

I decided to open the cabin door to call for help. Sitting on the floor in front of the door, I kicked it with both feet, but the door wouldn’t open. It was stuck. Disgusted, I started to crawl towards the bed when I noticed my thermo boots standing by my clothes closet. My feet were terribly cold and felt like needles. I had to put my boots on.

I sat on the edge of my bed to try and put my on my boots. When I would swing my boot up to my foot, the boot would fall out of my hand. I couldn’t pinch my fingers tight enough to hold onto the boot. I gave up on this idea quickly and set my boots back by my closet. I laid back in bed trying to figure out what to do next. I heard cars going by outside. Then I heard hollering. Hunters were driving deer right behind my camper!

This is when I started to have hallucinations, thinking that the deer hunters were people calling for us. I thought that everybody knew we were in trouble. As I sat on the floor next to Bob, I was expecting that at any minute the door to my camper would open and we would be saved.

Pretty soon the voices that I heard went past the camper and the sound grew weaker and weaker. I listened until I couldn’t hear them anymore. “Please come back.” I tried to say, but they were gone. My mind sank to an all time low. I was completely devastated. I couldn’t believe those hunters could have missed knowing that we were in trouble. I tried calling to them, but my voice was just a whisper.

I fell asleep thinking that soon someone would come and knock on our cabin door to ask for directions, or to ask how the hunting was going for us. Then they would discover our troubles and help us out. Unbeknown to me at the time, a hunter had spent a half hour sitting on the front bumper of my truck, watching for deer.

The kerosene fumes and bitter cold slowed down my heart, depriving my brain from oxygen. I had to force my mind to do anything. I would tell myself over and over to keep trying. I had to force my brain to respond to my own thoughts. I knew everything I did from here on would take a lot of thought and physical effort. I drifted back to sleep.

When I woke up, I had no idea how long I had been asleep. The realization of the problem we were in started to over take me. I was scared. I was damn scared! Almost crying, I started to panic! What was going to happen to us? Were we just going to lay here and freeze to death? I now had no feelings in my hands or feet.

Thank God something inside me kept me going… “Keep trying, keep trying! You’ve got to save yourself.” Bob was still laying there in the middle of the camper floor. He didn’t move when I crawled over him to get to the stove for the second time. I shook him awake and spoke to him, but he just opened his eyes once again and stared. I tried to turn it on, straining with all my might, but no success. Then, I thought about Bob. Maybe his hands were not as badly damaged as mine. Maybe he could turn the stove on. I told him to suck on his fingers to try and regain feeling. I was amazed when he responded to my command. It was the first time that he gave me any indication of understanding or hearing what I had said to him.

Meanwhile, I made an attempt to light a match. I found a penny pack of matches and fumbled with them for 15 minutes, trying to tear one from the pack. I gave up. I told Bob to do the same. Three fingers on his right hand were red from the ordeal. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched him fall asleep. I wasn’t cold anymore. My feet felt like wood. I was numb.

Looking around the camper I noticed my hunting knife and hatchet hanging on the wall. An idea came to me like a shot. I only had one idea to survive this whole ordeal. I had only one choice left. I had to get my hatchet and break the lock on the door. It was a very small hatchet, light weight for carrying and used for gutting a deer or chopping firewood. It was razor sharp. While taking it out of the sheath, it slipped out of my hands, barely missing Bob’s arm. Wow! I needed to be more careful. Kneeling by the front door, I began pounding on the lock. It was an Elgin lock, built with a strong casing and made for plenty of abuse, and so far taking all that I could give it with my little hatchet.

Finally, after heart breaking efforts, I gave up. The door was still locked. I sat on the camper floor and looked around. I noticed that ice had formed on the inner walls down by the floor and Bob was lying with both feet pressing against it. He was beginning to look bad, real bad! He was barely breathing and I knew if I didn’t get us out of here soon, we wouldn’t make it out alive.

I got up to help him and lost my balance. I fell hard and landed on the heater, breaking the mantle on it. That was that. Any future ideas of relighting the heater were gone. With a broken mantle, it would be impossible. I sat there feeling like I was the last man alive on the face of the earth. I knew that if we didn’t get out soon, there would be no sense in going on.

Then, I thought of the hammer. It was in the tool box under my bed. I had strength in my arms, wrists, and hands, but nothing in my fingers. I crawled over to the bed and pushed back the mattress, lifting up the plywood panel separating me from the toolbox. I flipped open the lid and my heart almost stopped. No hammer! I lifted the second shelf in the box and there it was. I crawled back to the door, fumbling with the hammer. I knelt by the front door and I began to hammer away at the lock. I held the hammer with both hands to prevent from dropping it. Every time I struck the lock, millions of pins and needles went shooting up my arms. I dropped the hammer many times, but I kept picking it up again and again and continued to pound on the lock.

All my hope was fading…and then it happened! I had not been able to break the lock, but I had finally hit the door hard enough, to cause it to crack open. This allowed the door to pop open just a little bit. It opened just enough. I knew the lock was beginning to break. I was frantic! I seated myself at the door and with both feet I kicked the door. The top gave a little, but the bottom was still stuck. It was frozen to the floor. I angled myself so that I could kick towards the bottom of the door. I kicked hard with both feet and I heard the door crack. Knowing that I couldn’t hold on much longer, I kicked with all my might and the door flew open. Hurray! We were saved!

As I knelt in the open doorway, I looked into the woods. It was starting to get dark. I knelt there for a while listening for noises, any noises. I listened, hoping to hear a gun shot, a car, or even a train whistle, but there was no sound of any kind. Fear encompassed my body. I was totally afraid. It seemed like it took days to get out of the camper, but now I was afraid to leave it.

I didn’t recognize the woods. I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t recognize anything. These were not like the woods I knew in Ohio. I remembered the friendly woods I played in, as a boy. The woods in front of me looked lonely and scary. It was so silent here, except for the eerie cold wind blowing through the trees. There was a light covering of snow which made it look cold and unfriendly. I was so afraid, terribly afraid.

As I looked up through the trees, I could see the sky was clear and full of bright stars. I had to do something. The only thing that I could think to do was to get the truck started and try to drive us to the main highway. Maybe I could find a farmhouse or a passing motorist, anyone to help us.

I sat down on the floor of the camper with my foot reaching for the box we used for a step. I lost my balance and fell flat on my face and out the door of the camper. I reached for a small tree, pulled myself up and stood there, outside looking around. I was cold, weak, and very confused. My mind wasn’t working clearly. The cold and kerosene fumes that filled the camper had my brain in the Twilight Zone. I had to force myself to get my brain working again. I couldn’t remember a thing. I didn’t know where we were. All I knew was that we were parked just off a dirt road, in the middle of nowhere.

Staggering and falling down many times, I finally reached the cab of my truck, only to find the door locked. I made my way to the passenger door and it was also locked. I made my way back to the camper by holding onto the side of it. All the while, I was in my bare feet and feeling no pain. My feet were numb!

While I was going around the back corner of the camper, I started to fall. I reached out for something to grab and caught hold of a tree. I fell beside it and almost wedged myself between it and another tree. I pulled myself up and crawled back inside the camper.

After a long search, I found the truck keys in the cupboard where we kept our rifle shells and binoculars. I crawled over to the door and decided to go out the easy way, sitting down in the doorway. I took one step and went down like a rock. When I hit the ground, it knocked the keys out of my hand. I laid there for awhile, fumbling in the snow covered leaves, searching for my keys. After finding them, I started to get up and realized how weak I was. I could barely get to my feet and I was praying that I wouldn’t fall again.

When I reached the truck door, I noticed that my fingers were too stiff and frozen. They were badly swollen and I couldn’t fit the delicate little key into the key hole. I returned to the camper, but when I reached the door of the camper I convinced myself not to give up.

I didn’t want to spend another cold night in the camper, not if I could help it! I reached into the camper and got a hold of my six cell flashlight that was lying in the corner. With the flashlight in one hand and my keys in the other, I slowly made my way again to the door of my truck. I watched every step I took for fear of falling down again. I didn’t think that I would be able to get up, if I fell again.

When I reached the door, I began to beat on the cab’s window wing, hoping to break it. Then I could reach in and unlock the door from the inside. I stood there pounding on it and then I lost my balance and started to fall backwards. I let go of the keys and flashlight and caught hold of the west coast mirror on the side of my truck. I kept myself from falling. I decided to give up. I crawled back into the camper and pulled the door shut behind me.

While I was on my knees in the camper, I looked at the counter top; I began to think of the altar at my church, back in Ohio. I knelt against the counter and I started to pray to God for forgiveness. I told him he would be receiving me soon and hoped he would please have mercy on me. I was kneeling at the counter when I felt a rush of very cold air coming through the camper door. I felt the presence of something coming into the camper and standing right behind me.

In my mind I was thinking, “What was happening? What was it? Where did it come from? And would it help us?” I was so numb and tired. I had to fight to stay awake. I was afraid to turn around and look, but I felt the presence of something. I thought maybe it was a guardian angel. I knelt a while longer, praying and waiting for something good to happen, but nothing did.

I was afraid to fall asleep. I tried to stay awake as long as possible. I fell sideways and landed against Bob. I have no idea how long I laid there. I felt a gush of cold air, which reminded me that the camper door was still open. I crawled over and closed it, but not hard enough for the lock to latch again. I was cold and completely exhausted. I crawled back into the cold bed. It was like getting into my coffin. This is where they would find me, I thought.

When I woke up the following morning my mind was much clearer. I thought that being in the fresh air the day before made it easier to think. Then, I heard a car door slam right outside the camper! Someone was out there! It took all my strength and I got out of bed, staggered toward the door, and I fell out of the camper, head first hitting the ground with a terrible thud. Standing beside the car, not 30 feet away, with a rifle in hand, was Charles Ramage. His mouth fell open and his eyes grew bigger as he walked toward me.

“What’s the matter with you?” Charles asked. I tried to speak but my voice couldn’t respond. Then another man came forward and his name was Carl Schmoke. One look at my feet and he said, “This man has been frozen!”

They stood there staring and then sprang into action. They raced back to their car and put their guns away. They got a blanket and wrapped it around me and carried me to their car. They set me up in the backseat and then went back to the camper to investigate. I heard one of them say, “I think this one is dead.”

“No….No!” I tried to scream! They heard the commotion I was making and came back to the car to settle me down, telling me that they had made a mistake and that my friend was still alive.

I could tell by their conversation that one of them was afraid to move us for fear we would die on the way to the hospital. I heard one say, “If we leave them to go for help, by the time we get back, they will both be dead.” They went back to the camper to get Bob; he was frozen in the fetal position.

They had a hard time getting Bob through the narrow doorway of the camper. They were afraid to bend him, so they sort of draped him over me in the car. I tried to speak, but could only make a light sound, nothing you could understand. I heard one man say that we were heading to Renovo Hospital. Charlie kept asking me questions, but I couldn’t even pronounce my own name.

Nothing much can be said about our trip to the hospital, except they took us down 17 miles of winding mountain roads. When we reached the hospital, Charlie Ramage raced inside and came back with 5 nurses and some orderlies. They took Bob and put him on a table and started administering oxygen to him as they rolled him inside. They put me in a wheelchair and gave me oxygen as well.

When we were brought into the hospital they said we looked like frozen turkeys, according to Dr. Frank Dwyer, a country physician for 55 years. He wore his eye glasses very low on his nose, looking over the top of them. I had the feeling he didn’t give us much of a chance for survival. Both of us were frozen rigid. A clergyman administered last rights as the nurses began treating us for hypothermia.

They cut away our clothing. Relays of nurses applied compresses, first cold, then warmer ones and finally hot compresses as we began to thaw out. This went on for hours. The nurse repeatedly asked me “What is your name? What is your name? Where are you from?” She was finally pleased when I tried to talk. I was shocked at what came out; just a bunch of jumbled words. I couldn’t pronounce my own name!

The nurses administered antibiotics, blood plasma, and other drugs. Most of our body organs were not functioning and our bladders were bleeding. They had started intravenous feeding and administered glucose. It was hours before our arms and legs could be stretched out to their normal position. We both had to survive fevers as high as 106 degrees.

The pain, coming from my swollen stomach, was terrible. But, once they put in a catheter, the pain subsided. The nurses couldn’t believe what they were seeing, as blood and slush came out of my bladder. I passed out when my heart stopped. A nurse climbed on top of me and pushed down on my chest as hard as she could and got my heart going again. I remember the oxygen mask hitting my face and the nurse saying, “Welcome back!”

I woke up once to find someone standing at the foot of my bed. It was longtime friend, Tom Hengartner. He had driven 8 hours in some of the worst winter weather to see me. I must have looked terrible, but all he said was, “You’ll be alright.” My mother, wife and brother, along with Bob’s parents flew into Renovo to see us. It was a terrible shock for them to see us in our condition.

We had three wonderful nurses working around the clock for the next 9 days. It was a small hospital and I noticed a lot of people walking by our room. I guess they all wanted to see the frozen hunters.

One morning, Dr. Dwyer came into our room with a nurse following close behind him. The nurse was pushing a small white cart on wheels with surgical instruments. I said to myself, “What was this all about?”

Dr. Dwyer barked, “Slide him down in bed towards me.” He was standing at the foot of the bed. I was afraid to look, but I knew I had to. He took a tool from the cart and started to stroke the bottom of my foot. I thought he was checking for feeling, but he was checking for live tissue and cutting the bottom of my foot with a small scalpel.

I then realized what the doctor was about to do. Next, he took a pair of side cuts from the cart. He cut off my toes, one by one. I could hear the cracking sound when my bones splintered. It was the same sound you hear when you cut through a small wire. They gave me nothing for the pain. When he left the room, I was a nervous wreck!

The next day they took me into surgery and did the same thing to my other foot. A nurse stood by me and wiped the sweat from my forehead. My hands looked like baseball gloves, swollen. My fingers were all split at the ends. It looked like my fingers had been cut with a razor.

We remained at Renovo Hospital for 11 days and we had nurses on duty 24 hours around the clock. I had not heard Bob say a word in all this time. The nurses would try to get him to talk, but he would stare at them and not make a sound. Bob was in his own little world. When the curtain that was separating us was open, I would try to get Bob to talk. I had no success.

I was having a terrible feeling of guilt. I felt responsible for Bob’s condition. I had invited him to go hunting. It was my truck and my camper. I had parked it in the same spot this year as I did in the past. I was afraid Bob had brain damage.

On the 10^th day of our hospital stay, a nurse came in to our room early in the morning, and said we were going home. “Home, home…” I heard a weak voice say. It was Bob. Those were the first words out of his mouth since the accident happened. What a relief for me. Bob had begun to talk and everyone was ecstatic.

The next morning, an ambulance from our home town, took us on a long ride back to Elyria Memorial Hospital. It was a nonstop trip, except stopping for gas. We went through all the red lights on the way with the sirens blowing. The trip was 300 miles with my brother in-law riding shotgun.

I spent the next five months in the hospital in Elyria. I credit my wife for saving my fingers. She was there twice a day, everyday to exercise my fingers so that my knuckles would move. We would both be in tears, but the exercising had to be done. The big day came, after four months of exercising, when I could touch my thumb to my little finger. I could finally see progress, but it took me a long time to get my strength back.

I will never forget the doctors arguing outside of my hospital room, discussing whether they should amputate all my fingers to save my hands from gangrene. Upon hearing that, I worked harder to exercise my fingers even though the pain was excruciating.

Today, I still get what the doctors call “ghost pain” in my hands and feet. When I was released from the hospital, I couldn’t hold a zipper tight enough to zip a jacket. With a lot of hard work and prayers from everyone, Bob and I recovered, only losing our toes and half of both feet. We didn’t lose any fingers. Thank God…We felt lucky!

God works in many ways, which is so miraculous. Just the fact that we were rescued on a Saturday was a miracle. Carl Schmoke and Charlie Ramage never hunted on the weekend. They both felt that there were too many hunters in the woods on Saturdays. They both belonged to a hunting camp close by, but Carl didn’t want to drive his car down the rough road back to camp that day. They parked on the side of the road to walk into the woods to hunt. They knew the road was icy and a car might slide into them, so they decided to drive down the lonely road where we had parked.

I often wondered why God permitted our accident, and then being so close to death, He spared our lives. I would like to think that maybe the reason was to save the lives of  young hunters. Our hunting trip would be shared, and in turn would save the lives of others. Especially for anyone who may think this could never happen to you.

It is now 2009 and forty-eight years since my accident. I am still a serious hunter. I hunt every season. I never have let my experience keep me from doing what I love…and I love to hunt! I am very fortunate to be married to a supportive and understanding woman who has never discouraged me. She helped me through every step of my recovery and everything over the last 48 years.

I received my high school diploma through a two year correspondence course and I received a diploma from The Cleveland Engineering Institute. I have worked 30 years at Ridge Tool Company. I started as a draftsman and worked my way up to a Plant Layout Engineer. I also sold real estate for many years. I love fishing, gardening, and raising animals.

My wife and I have two children and three grandchildren. My son loves hunting and fishing as much as I do. Now that I am retired, we go hunting together as often as we can. I feel very fortunate for the second chance I was given and thankful for the life I have lived. I know Bob and I are two very lucky men and I give thanks every day.

 

 

 

 

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