A lot of people start a task with little or no thought as to how they are going to finish it. While I have helped people out under many different circumstances, there are limits.
Some years back my hunting buddy and I were turkey hunting in the mountains. As we headed home at dusk we stopped to see if a guy walking the road needed help. He said he was headed back to his truck. Because it was getting cold and dark and all he had was a short sleeve shirt, his shotgun and some shells, we offered to give him a lift. Turns out he was five miles from his truck and headed the wrong direction. He had no map, compass, water, flashlight, cell phone or any idea where he was and was fortunate my hunting buddy and I recognized the landmarks he described. We turned around and took the guy back to his truck.
Another time my hunting buddy and I were bone tired and sitting down to a hot dinner when someone knocked on my trailer door. Turns out to wo guys from California had knocked down a bull, then drove their truck 300 yards off the road down a slope with a 120 foot vertical drop where they promptly got stuck in a swampy area. All they wanted was for us to skip supper and tow their truck out - never mind that this was in a travel restricted area where driving that far off the road was illegal or that my truck would likely have gotten stuck as well. Instead we took the two guys and their dog to Craig and dropped them off at a bar.
Yet another time my wife and kids were fishing on Eleven Mile Reservoir west of Colorado Springs. Strong winds came up and the waves started getting high enough we decided to get off the lake while the getting was good. As we headed back to the docks we rescued a single woman and her young teenage daughter. They had been fishing close to shore in a blow-up raft designed more for a swimming pool than a lake. The winds started pushing them across the lake, a trip I'm not sure they would have survived. They had already lost their paddles and the waves were higher than the sides of the raft, which was pretty well swamped when we rescued them. The woman was trying to paddle with a shoe but the other shoes had been lost overboard. We got them to safety and I read the mother the riot act. Sharp hooks and small plastic inflatable rafts don't go well together and they didn't even have life vests. While I applaud the mother for trying to do something with her daughter, such poor planning could easily have killed both of them.
Three years ago I struggled with a bad hip to pack my elk out alone. While doing so I met a family that had been hunting the same area for years and were dragging an elk out whole on a EMT sled. They didn't offer me any help and none was expected or requested. Last year they were there again and had another elk down. My hunting partner and I had just gotten my elk back to the truck when we noticed they couldn't get their elk into the back of their truck. We could have left them to quarter it up as we had done but instead lent a hand.
As far as I'm concerned, the often heard phrase "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency [or obligation] on my part" remains as true as ever.
