Higginez;
Good evening to you sir, I hope the last weekend in June was good for you folks and you're all well.
We've been running a 4x4 since '81 and had a bunch of recovery gear on them since about '82, including a winch.
Remind me to tell you the "story before this story" sometime, but the oddest one was that buddy and I met up on a mountain looking for mulies and blue grouse one fine fall day and as we were shooting the breeze a brand new red, regular cab Mazda 4x4 goes sailing past us like it was a Baja contestant. There were two mid '30's guys in it, the back full of coolers and gun cases, none of which were secured sufficiently for their velocity.
Buddy made some comment about the bar must be opening soon and I said I was going to shoot one more grouse to get my daily limit of 5 and then head down. We parted company and in about 5 minutes another blue walked out and joined 4 of it's kind behind the seat of my '87 extended cab F150.
I headed down then and honestly in one of the straighter sections of what was not a straight road there on it's side was the Mazda.
One of the guys was standing beside it picking up debris from over the bank and the other was silently bleeding at the side of the road as he examined the barrel on his shotgun which was quite a U shape.
I stopped of course - they were in the middle of the road after all - oh and they'd hit a big water bar too fast and instead of taking it straight on, the driver had gone up on the bank on the left to avoid it and put the rig on it's side instead. When one of the two asked if I had anything to flip them back on the wheels, I replied they'd flopped their little red truck over in front of the right redneck, because in point of fact I absolutely did.
About this time bent shotgun guy slides over to me, quite perturbed like and starts telling me that he'd been telling buddy to slow down, that they were going to get in trouble and that on top of the bent shotgun and wrecked cooler the larger driver had crushed him fairly well in the wreck.. So he wasn't a happy chap at that juncture.
I located a point on the frame behind the front wheel to stick a shackle on safely, then found a decent Doug Fir up on the bank to strap a snatch block to, ran out the Warn's winch line and finally dropped an old Carhartt chore coat onto the cable just to be safe.
As I'm tightening up the slack, the driver goes over to the box and starts to "help" push it back over. This really and truly pisses off bent shotgun man who hisses, "Tell that _____ to get back here before the truck rolls on him!"
With as much tact as possible, I suggested that the truck box pusher cease and desist and come back to my pickup where it was safe....
Nope, he knew better and stayed put.
Again, I can't get me and my daily limit of grouse home without removing the pickup, so I've no choice but to be a wee bit firmer with the fellow who was both older and larger than me. Again I'm 5'6" on a tall day so larger don't take much.
While I forget my exact words, I more or less said to him that while I was a trained Occupational First Aid attendant, reviving someone who'd been crushed under a truck was a wee bit more than I had gear in the pickup to deal with. I "might" have asked if he wanted me to put him down or just leave him on the side of the road or something of that nature, because he was quite hurt apparently and came quietly back to the front of my Ford.
Bent shotgun man thought it was the funniest thing he'd heard in a awhile however.
The setup was a good one and the Warn easily popped the Mazda back onto it's wheels.
They were going to fire it up and drive away but took my suggestion to check the fluids first, which as I recall were pretty good, so then the driver fired it up and off they went, in nearly as much of a hurry as they'd been in before. Oh, they did say thanks before leaving, I need to be clear about that.
I'm never in a rush when I'm up the mountain so I pondered the vagaries of life and wondered about how animated the conversation might have become on the way back down.
Post Script..
About two weeks later my good wife and I were headed into a local micro brew pub for a burger when who should we run into but bent shotgun barrel man! He thanked me profusely again, told my wife what a heck of a good vehicle recovery guy I was and laughed once more when I turned to my wife and said, "See, it wasn't a wild story I made up!"
Post, Post Script...
Some other night if anyone is interested I'll tell about riding up on a young hunter who'd just killed his first buck and didn't know what to do.
That'll be a question for another thread perhaps?
Another night for sure though as 5:00 comes early and I'm old now.
Thanks for the thread, thanks for reading this far and all the best in the upcoming week.
Dwayne