Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada Missing hunter's body found - possible bear attack victim

Here's the story:

http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Alberta/2007/11/29/4694271-sun.html

They found his truck on Monday and it took until Wednesday, to cover a 200m radius and discover his body????

RO

Even in relatively flat country, 200m x 200m x 3.14, is a lot of area to cover. With steep terrain and thick bush it could take awhile, dogs might have helped to reduce the search time.

From the link: "Ground crews scouring the area yesterday found Peters' remains about 200 metres from his truck, which was located Monday, said Webb, adding it is unknown why Peters' remains were found near his truck."

I get about 30 acres in that many square meters. I could hunt that in two hours myself unless he was covered by a lot of snow.

In much of western Alberta or most of BC, you can get lost in 30 acres real easy and it happens to a lot of people here. The Ya Ha Tinda area has a fair number of Grizzlies and this poor bugger may have tangled with one, who knows?

I can show people places close to the BC-AB border where even local professionals with decades of experience can get lost and or killed by sudden avalanches; it has happened to a couple of friends of mine who were REAL experts in the mountains.

Last Sept. a self-professed "expert" bushman who mocked my careful preparations went to get water from a camp we were in about 20 miles by horse from the nearest gravel logging road. I offered to help him, but, he just snickered and strode off into the gatherin dusk on a good horse trail. Two hours later, I went and found this quiet, subdued and quite frightened former BC Park Warden, close to the creek and standing on fresh Grizzly tracks....from then on, I packed the water.

Maybe someone else will get lost in 30 acres but not me. I can tell the direction to come out with my compass. When not looking at the compass I can glance at the sun or a landmark for general direction.

Two hundred meters on a side is about a 1/10 of a mile. At one mile per hour I can walk that 1/10 of a mile in 6 minutes. If I can see three meters to a side then I cover six meters on the other side every six minutes. Two hundred meters divided by six is about forty trips. Forty trips times six minutes is four hours at one mile per hour.

The body had to be covered by snow. However it did not matter all that much as he was dead.

I would give you some bear hunting tips as I have hunted bears in Canada. When we could not find a bear right away we started asking the people there where the bears were. Since they live there they are the experts of course.

The problem was that we did not speak french and they would not answer us in english for such secret and valuable information. So we went to the police. I asked the police myself. He was standing there in his nice uniform and I said, in english, "do you speak english" and he answered "sometimes".

Now see how simple it all is? Just ask some expert.

He was attacked by a young grizz over a deer carcass. From what I hear, he managed to get one shot off and must have missed as there was no sign of a wounded bear. I know one of the guys involved in the search and am very familiar with the area. Rough country for sure.

Sorry to hear of the loss. My condolences to his friends and family.

His body might have been partly covered up by the grizz to eat later.

Famous last words.

Come on up to B.C. Don and I'll take you for a little walk in a 25 year old pine stand.

Landmarks, don't worry about that, all pine trees look pretty much the same and make poor references.

Sun, Yah its in the sky alright and knowing your in Canada, it will be in the southern sky, but due to the thick tree canopy over your head, you will basically just get ambient light.

Compass, great little tool, but when you walk off the end of an old loggin' road into an endless sea of timber, simply walking back at 180` is only part of the puzzle. You have to walk back far enough to hit the road you came in on. Better hope you don't make a turn before you get to the end of the road; not good. So now you've got to wonder in the back of your head if you've come back far enough to intersect the road if you go right/left, remember all you got to look at is 15-20' tall pine trees for land marks and a compass for a bearing , not a course . Now add into the equation fog, impending darkness and or dropping temperatures and things get real interesting in a hurry. Snow could actually be a good thing, because you could cut your original track, but if its snowing hard like it never does in B.C./Alberta, then your tracks are getting covered within 20 minutes......give or take.

I know I left some variables out, but hopefully you get the idea. 30 acres is huge with no landmarks and many a man has become lost and died within a short distance of safety.

I read a book a few years back that was based on the lives of early to mid 1900's trappers/guides in central B.C.. Each one of them was asked if they had ever been lost. The answer was quite humbling actually, especially when you consider that these guys spent 10-12 months a year in the woods and were the best of the best. Most of them smiled when the question was posed and the most common answer was "NOPE, but I've been turned around for a couple days, on a few occasions." That about sums it up for me and I would even venture to say that they have more experience, than even you Don. Getting lost can and does happen to even the best; admitting you're not immune and planning accordingly is often what makes the difference on the outcome.

RO

My condolences to the family.

A bear attack is a terrible way to go, too bad he couldn't take the bear with him.

RO

Great post RiverOtter,

You failed to add that in the 30 or so acres, in B.C., such an area could well include impassible rapids, impenetrable deadfall, not to mention many thousands of feet of vertical variation. I'm glad you mentioned that the winter, up here, the sun's so low in the sky - odds are, a person will never see it.

A road is almost no help - as we all know, in B.C. such a road might not have a vehicle on it for weeks - and a person wouldn't know which logging road he'd stumbled upon, where it lead - or where on it - he was located.

Things are a bit different up here than in the "lower 49"...

Savage99,

There are numerous old iron mines and tailing dumps in northern Minnesota that play heck with a magnetic compass. Walking a few feet or even shifting the compass can cause a massive needle swing. Walking the grid you described, well, see you in Albuquerque.

I was trying not to lose Don.

Could be a pun there.............grins

RO

Mr. River Otter and Mr. BCBrian:

Thanks for the very good thoughtful posts from both of you.

Please be assured I am not trying to denigrate anyone here either. I will admit I've had to sit down more than once on an old logging road, especially as Brian said on an overcast day and wonder just exactly where I�d parked the truck��.

My thoughts and prayers are with the hunter�s family as well.

Regards,
Dwayne

Even next to a road, its EASY to get turned around or lost up here. Last winter working with my boss, next to a main haul road, (by which I mean a two lane gravel road with 100 ore trucks and 200 log trucks a day going each direction, not to mention pickups and service trucks etc) we went to bang in a quick 20ha beetle salvage block. Dead flat pine, was pretty simple really, head in a couple of hundred meters, hang a sideways, meet up in the middle. Made a booboo by not taking a gps point at the truck. Really flat light, no sun, overcast, etc...

Even talking to each other on radios, following a timber type line on a map, listening to traffic going by, with sound bouncing off of timber. Met up in the middle, no problem. End of the day, "well lets head to the truck", we both headed off in opposite directions. Now, we are both experienced guys. Spend 10-12months a year in the bush, in the middle of nowhere. And we were both wrong as to which way to go.

"Knowing" where we were (well at least we knew which side of the North South running haul road we were on anyway), it was pretty simple to pull out the compass and head in the completely "wrong" direction and end up on the road, a couple hundred meters from the truck.

Hunting alone in the early fall this could of been bad news if this situation had been even slightly different.

Who hasn't had a critter run across a road at some point where you jump out rifle in hand and take chase, thinking it won't be hard to pop back out at the truck? Who grabs a compass or gps EVERY time and takes a point or bearing? Who has a map to help figure out where there might be a road to hit if you get dicombobulated?

Lost and dead? Could happen to the best of us up here.
Easily.

And too many people forget that.

Funny, those who actually live and work here seem to agree with my earlier point, but, WTF, we couldn't possibly know anything about our own region.

That northern forest is the WORST bloody place for getting lost in and it has happened to me as well as other very experienced guys I have known. In winter, when it can be -40*F OR COLDER, this will kill you very quickly and it happens all too often.

Yup, had a pretty quick reminder of that on tuesday.

I'm a bit more cold resistant than most, at least I don't get bothered as much by it as a lot of the people I've worked with.
Was only -25 C or so, and we'd been working all day on snowshoes, pushing damn hard, so sweating a lot. Hard enough that my hardhat froze to my hair. Wearing a nice polypro undershirt, fleece shirt, and wool stanfield as atop layer. Got back to the sleds at around 4 (which is dark up here now). Stipped off all of the top layers to let the sweat evaporate. (Gotta be dry for that ride out you know.) By the time I was putting the fresh dry layers on from my pack, my fingers just wouldn't work the way they should. If a person had a some sort of mishap where they got wet and had no dry stuff to put on, it wouldn't take long for the hypo to set in, and then it would be the big sleep.

here in PG its only minus 18 but with the wind chill its been about -29 , a helly hansen face mask has been saving my face today.All it would take is to loose your gloves or become wet and it would be lights out within a couple hours , if that.The face mask im using is also 100 percent polpro and really quite amazed at how well its doing , and bonus the tag says made in Canada.

Mr. redmtn, Mr. Kodiak Hntr and Mr. kutenay:

Hopefully we are not belaboring the point too much, but if we can save one reader, we�ve done our part.

I was finished teaching the survival night at Hunter Safety one year, when one of the parents came up to me and told me this story:

Two very capable Okanagan fellows were IIRC north of Kaslo, but in the Kootenays for sure, on a goat hunt in early fall. One chap knocked down a goat and they retrieved it no problem. On the way out they spotted a 2nd one, which also died, but it fell off the wrong side of the mountain. They retrieved it, but in the process of coming out, both hunters got soaked crossing a creek. Instead of stopping to dry off, they pushed onto the truck, which was less than an hour away.

The fellow said that by the time they got to the truck, he needed both hands to hold the keys to unlock the truck. He related that he could not remember how many times he�d dropped the keys, as his hands were not following instructions by then. He bluntly told me if they had not got into the truck and it had not started, they would would have perished.

As we�ve all said, it can happen to the best of us.
Please learn from our experiences and live to tell about it��

Regards,
Dwayne