In the incident below, I wasn't lost, but I did hunker down for the night. This is my LAST SHOT column I wrote about it 20 years ago for AZ Hunter and Angler magazine.
Copyright by Tony Mandile
ONE-DOG NIGHT
Thirty years have passed since my first venture into Arizona's great outdoors. During that time I've had both some good and bad experiences. Thankfully, most have been of the former variety.
One experience I never had was getting lost. Oh, I had times when I was slightly "turned around," but none where I had absolutely no clue as to my location. Consequently, I've never spent a night away from my main camp unless it was intentional -- with at least a basic supply of necessities. Like most of us probably do, though, I frequently wondered how I'd handle it.
My late grandfather indoctrinated me early about the perils of being unprepared if it becomes necessary to spend the night away from camp. So I committed myself to carrying matches, an extra candy bar or two and water in areas where it is scarce. Under the right circumstances a person can live many days without food or water other than in the hot desert. So the candy and water were simply feel-good conveniences. But the matches seemed the most important to me.
We often read stories about people getting lost and dying. These accounts continually upset me, especially when the victim had spent only a night or two in the woods. I always wondered how someone becomes a casualty in such a short time. Yet it happens too many times every year.
Most folks who get lost die of hypothermia, the medical name for exposure. Characterized by a rapid lowering of one's body temperature and uncontrollable shivering, it soon causes disorientation and a loss of energy. Death is the final consequence. Hypothermia frequently follows panic, a common occurrence when a person becomes lost. Of course, it's very disheartening because the tragedy can be avoided if a person keeps his head on straight.
About five years ago on a lion hunt with Joe Mitchell in the Mazatzal Wilderness Area near Rye, I finally found out what's it like to spend a night in the wilderness alone without any food, water or equipment.
Luckily, I knew where I was all the time. But my camera, a .357 handgun, matches, a candy bar, a light rain jacket and one of those small, silver, reflective Space blankets made up my meager supplies. Unfortunately, the flashlight I had diligently stuffed into my small pack remained in Joe?s truck, where I had forgot it. About the only panic I had, though, came with the realization of having only three cigarettes. I knew I had to ration them to make it through the night and part of the next morning.
Mitchell and I had cut a hot track early that morning and stayed on it for six hours. Eventually, that track crossed another track. The dogs, confused by the second track, split into two groups. So I trailed one bunch, while the Joe followed the other. At sunset, my group of dogs were nowhere to be seen. I dropped off the ridge into the canyon where Mitchell had been about an hour earlier. He was gone, too.
Realizing it was at least a five hour walk to camp and thinking I could make it before midnight, I stumbled through the darkness along the meandering trail. It was a bad decision.
With no flashlight, I lost the trail three different times when it crossed the stream bed, got smacked in the face by an unseen branch and had more than one prickly pear cactus deposit its spines in my shins. I decided hiking in the dark without any moonlight was not my thing.
Thoughts flowed readily, but panic was not one of them. Instead, everything I had read or been taught about this kind of situation came to mind.
I began looking for a protected place on the trail with enough nearby firewood to get me through the night. Such a place existed only a few yards up the trail. A downed tree, though somewhat rotten and and a bit damp, offered plenty of firewood, and the light from my cigarette lighter revealed enough dry kindling nearby to sustain the wet wood. After building a fire ring out of rocks on some level ground, I gathered enough small wood to get a blaze started, broke the rotten log into smaller pieces and stacked them outside the fire ring. As the pieces dried from the heat of the fire, I would have a continuous supply of larger chunks to burn.
The warmth from the flames quickly countered the chill from the March evening. Hungry and weary from hiking around the up-&-down wilderness all day, I ate half of my candy bar and saved the rest for breakfast. I then cleared a "bed" next to the fire within easy reach of the drying wood. With my rolled up daypack tucked beneath my head and the Space blanket covering my torso, I snuggled up beside the now blazing fire and savored a few puffs from one of my three cigarettes.
A few minutes later, a noise that sounded like something walking through dry leaves came from the blackness. Just as I reached for my handgun, one of Mitchell 's hounds wandered into the light of the fire. I let out a sigh of relief.
"Here, Jake," I called.
The hound moved warily toward me, then stopped several feet away, moved to edge of some oak brush and laid down on a bed of fallen leaves.
Thinking it was nice to have company anyway, I shrugged and said, "Suit yourself. See you in the morning."
I turned, facing the fire, and tried sleeping again but worried about Joe and what he would think. No doubt he might imagine the worst. Just then, the sound of rustling leaves made me look over my shoulder.
Jake, with head lowered, cautiously crept to where I lay, circled once and then lowered himself to the ground and pushed up against my back. Providing a bit of body heat for each other, my canine buddy and I went to sleep.
Over the next 11 or 12 hours, I woke often to rekindle the flames with a fresh supply of wood from the dead tree. And each time, I lay back down, Jake wiggled his body closer to mine until he finally managed to get under the blanket, as well.
The next morning, after a five-hour, uphill hike, Jake and I reached the main road. I immediately heard the whine of an ATV. As the three-wheeler came around a bend, the driver spotted me and stopped.
"Are you Tony?" he asked.
"Yes."
He then told me he was Mitchell?s dad and had arrived the previous night. "Joe called me and said you might be lost. He drove down to Rye this morning because he thought you might come out that way. Did you have a bad night?
"Well, I could use a cigarette and a sandwich. But other than that, I'm fine. I spent the night with a warm fire in front of me and a warm dog behind me."
The man smiled. "Oh, you had a one-dog night, huh?"
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TONY MANDILE
How To Hunt Coues Deer
