Outdoors in the Central Valley: Hunting trip nearly turns tragic
“Get the heck out of there!” The author recalls a close encounter during a hunting trip with his father when he was about 17 years old. The trip was to a large ranch in the mountains west of Avenal with lots of deer and involved a truck, a cliff, and a late night. The truck was stuck on a steep incline and unable to move, forcing the driver to crawl over the edge of the road to investigate the damage. Luckily, his father found him and called two tow trucks to remove the truck. The incident occurred during the fall Coast Range deer hunting season and was described by the tow truck operators as a miracle that a three foot long rock was placed beneath the truck to prevent it from going over the side.
प्रकाशित : 11 माह पहले द्वारा Roger George में Sports
I had a very close call, way back when I was only about 17 years old, during a hunting trip with my father.
We not actually started hunting and my close call included a truck, a cliff and a late, late night.
It was the opening of the fall Coast Range deer hunting season and family friends with a large ranch in the mountains west of Avenal with lots of deer had invited us there to hunt.
We took our pickup, while towing our jeep, and arrived at the start of the mountainous dirt road leading to our camp, right at dusk.
The road was narrow, steep in parts, and wound around way back into the mountains. Our camp was about five miles away.
We unhooked the jeep for my dad to drive and he took with me following in the pickup.
His tail lights disappeared around a turn about 150 yards ahead of me, when I got to a tight right hairpin turn, with a steep wall on my left.
The road looked solid as I tried to stay in the middle of it.
And that’s when it happened.
I suddenly felt my right rear wheel start sliding to the right. I tried giving the truck more gas to get out of whatever was happening but before I know it, the truck was stuck.
The front end of the truck is pointing upward and the back of the truck is tilted downward to the right.
And it will not move.
All I could think about was that my dad was going to kill me when he found me.
I grabbed a flashlight and looked to see that my right rear tire and axle was sitting completely over the edge of the road. When I looked even closer, my blood ran cold. The truck was sitting on the precipice of a very steep drop. By my estimation, it was probably an 80-degree pitch. And it looked bottomless in the darkness.
Scared out of my wits, I was trying to figure out how to get out of this mess. I wisely (in air quotes) decided that I would crawl over the edge of the road, stand on the edge of the drop, hold onto the truck frame and look underneath the truck to investigate the damage and what was keeping it from going over the side.
As I am doing this, my dad comes around the corner looking for me.
He nearly had a heart attack when he saw me under the truck and what looked like the pickup about to go tumbling over on top of me and both of us going down the mountain.
“Get the heck out of there!” (censored version) he screamed at me.
“What were you thinking?” he asked.
I was frozen and had no reply.
I think that my dad was relieved to see me alive and that put off him actually wanting to kill me until later.
We headed down to town and called two tow trucks, which came up the next morning.
Looking at the scene in daylight, I felt nauseous.
The pickup was perched at what would have been a 400-foot drop that was nearly straight down. The pickup’s right rear tire was hanging out in space and the entire truck was badly canted to the right over the chasm. In addition, I had been standing over the drop hanging, while standing on very little.
It turned out that a road grader had pushed some loose dirt over the side of the hairpin turn, making it look like solid ground in the dark.
Both tow trucks were needed to pull out the pickup.
Later, the tow truck operators said that it was a real miracle I didn’t go over the cliff because a flat three foot long rock that had somehow ended up perfectly placed beneath the truck, was all that kept it from going over the side.
They were amazed, saying it was a one in a million thing that saved me. Phew. Keep believing …. And never give up!