Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Forest fire. No escape

My son and I were caught ahead of a conservation department controlled burn on a big block of public land. We were coyote calling and came in from the south. The conservation department set the fire from the north. The boy and I were about two miles from the truck calling in a deep brushy creek bottom when I first smelled the smoke. The smell became fairly strong on the wind so I decided to climb to higher ground to hopefully get a better view. About halfway up ashes were mixed into the wind like snow flurries. We picked up the pace and once we got high enough to see I could tell the bottom below us was smoke covered. There's no cell service so we hustled our butts off the 1 1/2 miles cross country back to the truck. Once we were able to drive out a way I circled around and saw fresh tire tracks on a logging road and followed them to where a dozen state trucks and trailers were parked. Nobody was around but I could hear heavy equipment running back in the direction we had been hunting. Once I got back to town I called the sheriff's office and was told that the conservation department was doing a controlled burn in that area. I explained how we were nearly trapped down in that holler and they said the conservation agent would contact me asap. He never did, I got busy and let it go. It was an interesting experience.