Hunting injury

[elkoholic]

Hi all,

Anyone ever have a freak accident while perusing elk or any animal for that matter?

This past season while chasing elk in the wet, slippery terrain I fell. The fall was pretty bad, I pretty much folded myself in half over a rock. I knew something wasn't right after the fall, but I tried to "bite the bullet" and make the best of my hunt. When I came off the mountain I went to the doctor, xrays were ordered and all looked fine from the films. Lower back Muscle strains is what I was diagnosed with and PT was scheduled. I went through 6 weeks of a low back PT regimen! With no signs of improvement, actually things seemed to be getting worse, pain was severe, leg numbness, muscle weakness. Went back to the doctor and said I was fine! A couple more weeks went by with unbearable pain. I went back to the doctor, "your fine, but we will get an MRI". Talk about frustrations!! Well MRI revealed a compression fracture, 2 herniated disc one of which is causing spinal stenosis with partial nerve amputation!! Surgery is required to prevent any further irreversible nerve damage.

[Swede]

Other than falling while descending from a tree stand, I have been injury free. I am sorry to hear about your back problem. Are you looking for a different doctor yet? Let us know how this all works out for you. Best Wishes.

[elkoholic]

Thanks Swede!!

As far as my primary doctor, I will not be going to him anymore, needless to say. And for the surgeon I did not want surgery, I got a second opinion but unfortunately they both pretty much told me the same thing.

Will keep you all posted...

[archery bum]

good luck to you, my wife had back surgery and it's a long road.

[Indian Summer]

I've told my story of falling from a tree 17 feet straight backward and landing flat on my back. Well it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out I had punctured a lung. But after they eventually released me I went home and my back was a MESS. I had a woman doctor at the second hospital where they life flighted me to. I called & told her I thought I had broken ribs. One cough or sneeze would ruin me for 2 days. Excruciating! She said non-chalantly "no we looked everything over no broken ribs" A week later I was sure of it, called back and got the same answer. So I made an appointment and when I got there she was downright rude.... like I was questioning her abilities. Really I was just questioning if she even gave a $h1t. So with a really nasty tone she blurted out "Fine... we'll take another xray" which they did. Yeah... two ribs broken an inch and a half to the right of my spine! Nothing they can do about broken ribs but at least I knew what was going on. I'm never one to assume that any professional is above being wrong. You know when something isn't right. Your body tells you more than some doctor who has had a long day or just wants to go home.

[Lefty]

Im just lucky to be alive
I won the best unsolicited article of the year in the North American Trapper magazine. This is the version I submitted 9 years ago.
I payed the price damaging my shoulder digging too many pocket sets and freezing my feet has been a never ending problem that has gotten worse over the past 22 years


I

Lessons From A Broken Twig

Trappers take all sorts of risks. Some risks are obvious, some are circumstance, some are the result of luck good or bad, and some are just stupid. I confess, I have fallen into each of these categories. The riskiest or most life threatening always seems to have happened when I was alone.
Driving too fast around a trapline has been a problem I hope I have finally overcome. Many are the time I had too much speed with the combination of mud, rain or snow, and found myself in a ditch. Traveling a little too fast on a grassy lane covered with frost plowed me into an oak tree one day. They are hard. On a western trapline another eventful day, popping over a hill at 70 mph gave me a start when a big round hay bale emerged in the middle of the road. One fall day I must have fallen asleep with the consequence of rolling my new pickup on a corner.
A real western threat is livestock on the road, especially those black cows at night. Cattle roam freely on open range in the west, and they can be hard to see in time when the sun is near the horizon, or in the darkness. I’ll not soon forget when my partner slammed on the brakes and stopped just a few feet in front of a big black cow.
I’ve had my share of dunkings too. Perhaps like you, the number of times I’ve filled my hip boots must be in the hundreds. Tripping in creeks or marshes is commonplace too. I suppose breaking through the ice into muskrat and beaver runs is to be expected, and to add to the fun there is always a canoe tipping or hard slip on a creek bank. One event I recall was standing up in a boat while looking back upstream. You guessed it, a log stopped the boat, inertia took over, and the comedy ended with me landing on my feet in water that didn’t reach the top of my hip boots.
Then there is the fickleness of the weather. Snowstorms have extended a number of trapping trips for me. One time my partner and I spent two full days trying to get home on what should have been an 8-hour trip.
I had a really close call when beaver trapping under the ice. I had just set up a few beaver colonies four miles up the river from where I usually trap. Finding trap locations wasn’t too difficult on the first three colonies. At the fourth I finally found two locations for #330 Conibears, both were feeding areas under fallen trees. Twenty inches of new southern Minnesota snow added to the experience checking the traps. I easily located the sets on the first colonies, but had a lot more trouble finding the two sets at the last colony. Best I could do was scoop along the bank trying to find the location of the submerged traps. I was guessing and chopped a series of holes in the ice without luck finding the traps. By the third hole I was frustrated, and stood in the hole in twenty inches of water while poking a stick under the ice this way and that to find either Conibear. I tossed my packbasket away from the hole some fifteen feet away, and then discovered the trap as I impulsively swept my foot under the ice.
The trap jaws closed across my right ankle. The trap hurt, and hurt even more whenever I moved. I was in quite a predicament. My right foot was firmly held by the trap, and I was forced to do a balancing act with my left. I was in trouble, real trouble.
It happens that earlier that day I had stopped at a hardware store, and purchased a roll of wire and some new shoelaces. While the wire was in my packbasket, the shoelaces happened to be in the top left pocket of my Carhart’s. With the aid of a couple rocks from the river bottom, I cut the shoelaces into shorter pieces, and tied together sticks I broke from a low hanging limb of an overhanging tree. After a few minutes I was able to hook the packbasket and drag it to me.
The ice above the beaver run was six to eight inches thick, but to the sides of the run the ice was nearly two feet thick. I chopped through the ice around the trap stake quickly, but I could not budge the stake or slide the trap over the top of the stake either. I continued to enlarge the hole while keeping as much ice around me as possible to aid my balancing on my left foot. My trapped foot hurt more and more, and my left was now sore from the balancing act. I was getting tired. Still I pulled and pulled on the stake that would not budge.
Realizing my situation was worsening with each minute, I did my best to keep water out of my boots. It was not possible to reach the stream bottom without filling my gauntlet gloves either. I did try to split the top of the trap stake or cut it shorter. No luck. I did find my small wood saw in my packbasket, but it did not reach much of the stake below the trap. Finally I did manage to tie a heavy branch to the saw so I could extend the saw blade beneath the trap, then was able to make three or four short strokes between rests. Three or four strokes, then rest, and do it all over again. Forty-five minutes since my mistake found me lying on the ice with my foot still in the trap but the stake cut free.
Getting the trap off my foot was another problem in my exhausted condition, but several minutes later the deed was finally done.
I had another close call trapping muskrats on Swan Lake here in Minnesota. I was trapping under the ice and using ice skates to pull a sled with extra clothes, glove, lunch, and trapping items. The ice was smooth and thick, but we did not have much snow. I was trapping nearly three miles from the landing, and pulled the catch home daily, then hid my small sled and gear hidden in the cattails until needed the next. But one day the temperature just seemed to get colder all day, and the ice was booming and banging all day…just making ice.
As I was skating along, something just didn’t look right in front of me and I skidded to a hockey stop before my sled crashed into me and nearly pushed me into a “V” shape where the ice had not pushed up, but down. Four feet of water waited, and it is very likely I could have easily been trapped in that ice-cold water. I can only venture to guess the outcome.
Another time I had been trapping beaver under the ice when the weather turned much colder. I waited until the temperature moderated to minus 22, and then headed out to check the sets. I was using my car to check traps this day, and I parked alongside a four-lane highway, leaving the motor running. I locked the car as I had an extra set of keys in my pocket. At the first set, I chopped open a small inspection hole with my hatchet. The trap was empty and had been sprung, so I began to reset the trap. As I did so, my hatchet dropped through the hole and I instinctively reached for it and filled my gloves with water. I quickly realized my mistake, threw the trap in my packbasket, and put my spare keys in my mouth as I realized my fingers would not function well by the time I made it back to the car.
As I came up out of the river bottom a highway patrolman greeted me. He had stopped to check my running car, and spotted me in the distance running toward it. He asked if he could be of assistance as he was aware the car was locked with the keys in the ignition. He was a little surprised when I spit the second set out of my mouth.
I returned in the spring to retrieve my hatchet. The leather had shrunk on the handle during its three-month dunking. The hatchet still hangs with my favorite hammer above my tool bench, and I still use it for odd jobs. For the past 23 years that hatchet has always been within reach when I trap on ice, and it could tell some stories too.
In the fall of 1979, the state of Minnesota opened a fall beaver season. By the time the season opened, the local lakes were frozen. I had the equipment, and decided since the Minnesota River was still open I could use my equipment and capitalize on the beaver population. I was able to use my 14 foot boat and 20hp Johnson, put in at home, then travel 21 miles to where my traps were set. Then I worked a 16-mile section of the river, and I was doing very well. One day as cold Canadian air moved in, I had my new pickup being serviced in the town where I would end my float trip. The Ford mechanic would be working into the night, and he expected to see me around dark.
The river was high, and this made downstream travel fairly easy as I pulled the traps. With the temperatures at 5 degrees and dropping, it was time to get these traps out of the water. At the second trap, the clutch dog in the lower unit of the outboard broke. That left me without any forward gear. I still had plenty of daylight, and with the increased flow of the high water, my guess was I would only be an hour or so late at the end of the line.
The there was the fifth trap. I pulled the bank stake and had a nice blanket beaver on the end of the slide wire in a #4 Herder’s coil spring. At the end of that was half of a cement block. I slipped on the bank, grabbed the boat and hooked my right arm over the gunwale. I flopped the concrete block into the boat followed by the beaver. I followed quickly, then dumped the water out of my hip boots. I decided I had to head for the closest home or farm, maybe only two miles away. I did have enough clothes on and with my life jacket cinched tightly, at least my chest wasn’t wet. After a few minutes my toes quit hurting, and although wet, I felt warm enough even though the ice was getting thicker as the day progressed. At times, I had to break up to an inch of ice along the shoreline to retrieve my traps.
I determined to keep going. The catch was good, it seemed every beaver weighed over 55 pounds. But I wasn’t making the progress I wanted to reach the ramp at a reasonable time, so I unloaded the extra weight of the cement blocks. At the last set I had another catch. Somehow the big beaver had pulled the cement block up and wrapped the drowning wire around a submerged tree. I was able to get the beaver out of the trap, but I was not able to cut the wire before filling my gauntlet glove with icy water. That was enough. I would get this trap another time. My fingers were now cold too. I wiped them off as best I could before putting on a pair of chopper’s mitts.
Soon I motored backwards to the boat ramp, grabbed a four-foot long T-bar stake and anchored the boat. I felt good, but cold. Eight blankets and a super blanket were in the boat, so I started jogging toward the Ford dealer ½ mile up the road. Panic struck. My legs weren’t working right. In fact I realized there wasn’t any feeling in my legs. I had no choice but to walk the rest of the way. The mechanic met me at the door. I explained my situation. He tried to get the boots off my legs, but my feet were frozen to my socks, which were in turn frozen to the boots. He grabbed a hose, connected it to hot water, and then filled my hip waders with heated water until they became free.
It happens the mechanic happened to be an old trapping partner of my dad’s from years ago when both were young men. My truck wasn’t ready, so we called my dad to come help me out with some muscle and dry clothes. As we waited for my dad, the mechanic told me how he had frozen his feet while trapping muskrats years ago. As feeling returned to my legs and feet, the pain began.
Soon my dad came to the rescue and we loaded the traps and beavers into his truck. When we each grabbed an end of the boat, we couldn’t budge it. Using a hammer and a 2x4, we had little choice other than beat ice up to 2” thick to break it up and remove from the boat.
My feet soon turned a funny color. A week later I lost a bunch of skin from my toes and the bottom of both feet. I lost feeling in 5 of my toes, and as I sit here at the keyboard, I still vividly recall the pain recovering from frostbite.
It happens I had another really close experience when beaver trapping. This time I was back on the Minnesota River in early March. Part of the river was open from the warm discharge of an electrical power plant. The weather had been warm and the beavers were working the exposed banks on the river. I slid my boat down the bank onto a ledge of ice along the water, loaded it with a handful of traps and gear, then slipped it into the river. My plan was to set three colonies upstream. The first location looked hot. The beavers had worked a small willow patch about 80 yards long. The sun had melted the surface of the mud and the water was running clear and fast. The beaver were feeding heavily here, and fresh castor mounds were evidenced along the bank. On the downstream side, I slid my boat up on an ice shelf, grabbed some gear to make two sets. I filled two sand bags with gravel from the bottom of the river to make drowning weights at the ends of ten-foot long drowning cables. A short distance upstream I began to make my first set on a small castor mound. The trap drowning wire was staked on one end, trap connected with a one-way slide lock, and the sand bag was attached at the other end, which was tossed into deep water with the drowning wire tight. Next I bedded the trap in 10 inches of water right next to the bank. As I unscrewed the cap of the lure bottle, I heard a twig snap out in the water behind me. I turned around. Then pure panic. Somewhere upstream apiece of ice had broken loose and was now floating downstream. It was huge. The ice slab was 40 yards across, a couple hundred yards long, and fully 20 to 30 inches thick!
Hundred of tons of ice were coming straight at me. I wildly tried to climb the bank and slipped. Next I did manage to jump up the slick riverbank only to slide back into the river once, twice, then three times. The ice was moving fast in the current now. I calculated the speed of the ice, then managed to jump up on the leading edge. The ice chunk gouged and flattened everything in its path, then shot me up on the bank, and retreated, almost silently, back to the river.
Exhausted, I rested in the willow thicket with my chest heaving up and down as I tried to get more air.
I retrieved my traps and went home, glad to be alive.
For seven years, I lived in the Pacific Northwest. A real trapline was tough for me as we lived in a suburban area. But each year I did manage to run a few traps and snares for cats and coyotes. The first season I discovered how effective log crossings were for traveling animals. While camping I had discovered a few fallen log crossings on a Cascade Mountain stream that would make great locations for snares. Winter came, the snow deepened and the stream turned into a roaring torrent.
I might add there are only two weather conditions during winter in the Cascades. Rain or snow. Today it was raining. The plan was to set a number of log crossings where huge old growth Douglas firs had fallen across roaring streams. The first log was a massive tree, six feet in diameter. I guessed the log had served as a bridge for a good 40 years. The old growth tree had fallen across the stream cavern 60 feet above the water. This location showed lots of furbearer signs. Tracks in the two-day old snow told me two bobcats and six coyotes had crossed since the snow fell. What a hot spot!
I grabbed eight snares, wire staples, a lineman’s pliers and my old faithful hatchet. I set four snares on the log. On the far side of the log I admired my handiwork, and imagined three or four holding furbearers when I returned.
The sound at this location was tremendous with the water below rushing through the cavern. What a neat place, what a view. The rest of the world was missing a fantastic experience in the deep white snow, rocky cavern, and a rushing torrent of water.
Wishing I had snowshoes, I tromped another 400 yards to another tree fallen across the wild water. This log was smaller, and like the previous location, the sun had melted the snow on top of the log. While I guessed this tree had fallen only a few years ago, a single coyote track told me it knew where this bridge was too.
The bark remained on the lower 20 feet of the log, and this made it somewhat easier for me to walk on the log to set my snares. I planned to set four snares on this log too. The first snare was set quickly using a fence staple and a double twist of #14 wire for a snare support. Simple, quick, and effective.
Just as I was stepping beyond the attached bark, I tried the traction with my foot softly and discovered it was slicker than ice. Looking down, shivers went through my spine. If a man fell from here, there was no chance of survival landing on the sharp rocks below protruding from the torrent. I figured a man wouldn’t have time to drown, the power of the water slamming his body into the rocks would take the life quickly.
As I retrieved the snare I had already set, I looked closely to evaluate the single coyote track on the log. It had indeed made similar progress on the log, but a film of pollen on the log told the story. It had slipped too. Claw marks revealed the coyote had spread its toes to gain traction, but new scratch marks on the side of the log and no tracks either backtracking or on the other side of the log confirmed the coyote had met a fate that might have been mine as well.
I collected all five snares, including those on the first log. Then I spent the next 45 minutes driving home, and wondering.
My heart still beats faster when I think about near misses I have experienced on traplines. I think I am a little lucky and a lot blessed. My love for trapping and the outdoors has put me in harm’s way, but lessons I have learned have also kept me alive.
Always be careful on the trapline. Use your head and be aware risks can often be avoided one way or another. When it gets tough, I hope your luck is good luck!--

[Trophyhill]

I've been lucky. I slipped on some ice this year hunting elk and my pack broke my fall and softened the landing. went down pretty hard and was worried I'd damaged my bow but it took the abuse.

while going gutless on my buddies mule deer in November, my hand slipped off the hide and i sliced my pinky finger to the bone at the knuckle above my nail. I think I bled more than the deer. I carry emergency supplies in my pack and was able to wrap it and close it up with some athletic tape. that sucker hurt for a month everytime I bumped something with my pinky.

I have 2 herniated discs in my back from an injury when I was in my early 20's and know some of your pain. L4 and L5. at times the discs push against the nerve causing severe pain and then goes away anywhere from hours to days. the only way to see soft tissue damage like this is with an MRI. I went through the same crap with the doctors until finally having an MRI 2 months later. when I first sustained the injury the pain was excruciating. I've had to re learn how to use my body to move and lift without aggravating it.

hope you come thru all of this ok and able to continue hunting elk Elkoholic.

[elkoholic]

Thanks trophyhill!
I'm hoping for the same as I am only 30. I wish I was wearing my pack to break my fall, I was just coming from a stock on a nice bull and set my bag down. The thing that I have on my side is that I'm young, healthy and very active(or I was). The doctor said if it wasn't for the severe compression on the nerve amputating it, we would be able to treat conservatively.

[Still Hunter]

I've had 4 falls while hunting. Three of them were broken ribs, and one was a broken back. cracked two vertebra. The ribs were easy to get back. The broken back was pretty hard getting back out alone. I left my back pack and lost it. I wouldn't leave my gun, so I dragged it out. Not my favorite hunt.