Some years ago, I went with a buddy of mine to Moran Jct. Wyoming to hunt elk and moose. My buddy had the moose license. I had a chest cold, but decided to go anyway.
We got to the ranch where we picked up horses at dark, and decided to go ahead and ride up the mountain to camp that nite. In the hurry to get going, I didn't change into my Sorels, and by the time we got to camp, I had frostbite on my feet.
Over the next two days, my condition got worse, and my feet hurt like crazy. Next morning, I stayed in camp, trying to get warm around the campfire. All of a sudden, my buddy came riding into camp, with blood pouring from his hand- he had killed a moose, and in the process of quartering with a super-sharp hatchet, had nearly severed the index finger on his left hand.
I saddled up, and the two of us rode off the mountain as fast as we could to get him to the hospital at Jackson Hole.
Once we got to the emergency room, we were finally waited on by a doctor, named Walker, who appeared to be either stoned or drunk. He cleaned up my buddy's hand, put a butterfly bandage on it, prescribed him some pills, and prescribed me some elixir which was mostly Codeine- we came to refer to it as 'Dr. Walker's cough medicine'. He looked at my feet, and proclaimed that I would lose my toenails- which I did, all of them, in a few weeks.
We stayed in Jackson hole at a hotel for a couple of days, and by that time I was feeling a whole lot better, thanks to the 'cough medicine'. We decided that we needed to head back to camp, and take care of my buddy's moose. It turned out that other hunters in camp had packed the moose down to the main lodge, where we loaded it up and headed for home in Casper, WY.
My buddy's finger never fully healed, and for years after, it still scabbed up and oozed. Perhaps a stitch job would have been in order.......
