Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The closest you've ever been to death?

Amazing stories! While I've had several events in the past 60 years,
June of '80 and AK tried the hardest. My cousin and I drove up to Fairbanks from Casper to meet my dad's cousin for a Placer gold mining adventure. Just out of high school, my cousin was one year older. We drove 24 hrs a day to get there on time. On my turn, I fell asleep and woke to the sound of the truck mowing down scrub pines. I tried to get out, but the door was blocked by a 8' tall Boulder. No damage, missed it by inches. We continued on and met up in Fairbanks and headed towards Circle. We dropped our gear as we crossed Birch creek in the mountains. We had a 13' ft al+ canoe, the other three had a makeshift raft of tractor tubes and plywood. We had our gear and almost all of the food. We had 30 miles to float to where the 8" suction dredge had been heloed in, earlier that spring. We drug that canoe so much we popped several spar rivets, we had to fill the holes with pine and rubber cement. My closest call was as we came round a sharp bend, we ran into a snag. I was on the stern and was swept off, I grabbed a root and played bobber until my cousin could get back up to me. My hip waders trying to kill me by sucking me under the jam for what seemed like forever. He got close to me and held out an oar, I was so cold that I couldn't let go of the root, but finally did and made a desperate lunge, I don't know how I managed to grab it, but I did. He swung me over to the eddy. There were a couple other close calls that trip. We swamped the canoe and lost most of our food, I went up weighing 189, came back a month later at 154#. Our journal was pretty interesting.

woke up one morning and my bed didn't seem the same and the room didn't either, I was laying on my stomach which I don't do. As I started to push myself up to see what the deal was I felt a hand on my back and a womans voice told me I was in the hospital and that I'd been in a traffic accident, then the lights went out. Sometime later I was awakened and asked who to call, as soon as I answered the lights went out again. I found out later that the priest (Catholic Hospital) called the Mrs. and told her to come right down, when she got there they weren't making any promises. After a few days and a few surgeries they moved me out of the ICU. I'm still undergoing treatment and therapy and have another major surgery coming up next month.
I still have no memory of the collision, I was on my motorcycle and was blindsided by an SUV, never saw it coming.

Well.... thinking about it, I started young, being hit by a car on a dirt bike ( obviously I was the one in the wrong place at that one.). Hit my mom’s clothes line with a splitting maul at age 16: it came back as fast as it was going down and split my noggin open.

At 21 I was a bouncer when the locals decided to pick a fight with a motorcycle “gang”. That was exciting.

Various close calls driving motorcycles, cars and semi’s, but nothing most of us haven’t done.

Vibrio almost did me in, even with IV antibiotics for weeks. I recommend avoiding that.

DVT’s were probably the closest. Ended up with “multiple, bilateral embolisms”, anyone of which could have killed me if they had gone “right” to the Widow Maker instead of “left” to the lungs.

I suppose that means Someone still has plans for me, and I better get with it.

06:22(am), 23 October, 1983.....Beirut, Lebanon.

I've ran Birch Creek..I didn't die but there is a tricky spot or two along the way.
Hardest part for me was catching a ride hitchhiking from the takeout near Circle back to where we put in off the Steese Hyw., it's a long lonely road to be walking.

What qualifies as a "high powered rifle"?

super charged.

Hope you recover quickly. Bloody cagers!

Son has a permanent brain injury due to being blindsided by another bike! Wife hates then, I still ride......

I love a well placed Caddyshack quote... Great job...

Reading along couldn't really pick a time, you jogged my memory.

18 years old working construction. We were installing 100 foot high
lights in a mall parking lot. I understood trouble shooting procedures,
could handle hooking up wires if I knew where...they had me doing all
kind of stuff over my laborers position.

One day they ask me to make some connections at the base of one of the
poles. "The power is off". (18, not an electrician, I took their word)

These poles were on a concrete base about 3 foot high and 3 foot around.
You stood on the base and worked through an access hole. I was holding onto the grounded steel pole as I reached into the hole to wire a breaker.

Somehow, someone overstripped a wire in a neighboring breaker and
I stuck my right ring finger on it. I was stuck.
Couldn't pull loose, I hurt from head to toe, just standing there screaming
getting juiced up. I knew if I didn't get loose, I was dead, so I just threw my whole body back as hard as I could. Fell off the cement and rolled.
By the time I jumped up, guys were running to me, I had my hand cupped in the other and between my legs. They kept trying to see it, I fought to keep from letting them. I was afraid parts were missing. A friend finally got me
to let him look, I just had a hole burned up into it.

It looked like the end of a 7018 rod that had been used.
Only a bigger scale.
Never got checked out, so no other damage.
Lucky, considering the hot was one one hand and the grounds in the other.

Took a direct hit by lightning while hiking the Appalachian Trail. To this day I can’t even take static electricity…

God Bless the Warriors, glad you made it through Brother.

About drown Jan 1 1990 while duck hunting. Boat flipped and I was in the water for over an hour.

Too many.

That I'm here today is a wonder.

Knowing death is at your door changes a person. Some for the better, some for the worse.

Some of you guys know what I'm talking about.

Like the smell of Gasoline and being Upside Down..

One of my dad's good friends died during heart surgery, was out 8 minutes or something like that, they brought him back. The story he told was crazy, He saw the gates of Heaven, but no one would open it for him, he was by himself. A lady came to his bedside and started reading his sons names off a scroll telling him about the sins of the father, etc. Said she was eating aborted fetuses from a gerber baby food jar. She was definitely not from Heaven. A bright light came from the other side of he bed and as it got brighter she would retreat into the shadows of the room. He got saved after that.

I was sitting at a red light a few weeks ago with a city bus next to me, light turned green and we both started across the intersection. I heard brakes locking up, looked in rearview, some joker in an older dodge ram had ran the redlight doing 60ish and just missed Tboning me and hit the bus that was next to me. Thought about that for several days.

I was shot at while deer hunting. I'll never forget the sound of bullets whizzing by.

Now we're getting somewhere...

Low level passes on occasion to draw ground fire...sometimes they obliged sometimes not ...