Survival Kits

It started out as a typical afternoon squirrel hunt. The three of us were students at Auburn University in Alabama, and we had taken the day off to bag a few squirrels in the nearby Tuskegee National Forest. By the end of the day, two of us sat on the fender of the car, reliving the hunt, squirrel by squirrel. It finally dawned on us that it was a long time past shooting light, and Mike, the third member of the party, had not yet returned to the car. But we didn’t worry because Mike was a highly trained and experienced in wilderness survival. He was working on his master’s degree in forest management and had just recently returned from four years of wilderness survival in the Alaskan back country.

A half hour passed, it was dark, and still no Mike. I blew the car horn three times. No response. For the next few minutes we blew the horn and shouted, stopping occasionally to listen. We were sure now that Mike was in trouble and began to ask ourselves questions. Had he shot himself accidentally? Could he have had a heart attack? Mike was a believer in emergency preparedness and was in excellent physical condition, so these possibilities seemed slight. As the reality that Mike was lost sank in, we began an organized search.

It was after midnight when we found him. A wild-looking man broke through a thicket and into the light cast by the searchers’ spotlights. It was Mike and he was scared and confused. His clothing was torn to shreds from the waist down, and his legs and arms were bloody from the scratches he had received, The.22 rifle, hunting coat and cap he had taken into the woods with him were gone where he didn’t know. We learned later that his hunting coat contained matches, extra ammunition, a pocketknife, and three squirrels, enough wilderness survival gear & food to live comfortably for many days.

Mike needed two weeks to recover fully from his brief but brutal ordeal. He recalled the panic that had struck him at dark when he realized he was lost. He remembered running for long periods of time. He also remembered feeling afraid of the strange people shouting and flashing lights in the woods. Embarrassment, guilt, confusion, and exhaustion only added to his sense of panic and helped cripple his ability to exercise good judgment. Mike, an above-average hunter and outdoors man, had come face-to-face with a wilderness survival situation and had not used his skills.

One of the first reactions to being lost or stranded in the back country is fear. It is fear that causes many people to panic soon after realizing they are in a survival situation. It was fear that made Mike run blindly and foolishly discard his equipment.