A day of elk hunting took a bad turn for a hunter who got lost in the Colorado wilderness, but he got lucky when the helicopter found him in the wrong area. He was separated from his group and was expected to return before sunset, so he didn’t have any equipment he’d need for an overnight expedition.
The hunter climbed a ridge to get phone service and the group told him to hike back south, but he went further north by mistake. So when the helicopter from the Routt County Search and Rescue team went looking for him, they prepared to find him south of his last known location. Luckily for him, they expanded the search a mile north and ended up finding him at 11:30pm. He was reunited with his friends and didn’t need medical attention.
“A mile doesn’t sound like far, but in that terrain, it’s extremely isolated and rugged,” explains Jay Bowman, the President of the Routt County Search and Rescue. “If we hadn’t gotten to him, the end result would not have been good.”