Fess up? Mistakes you've made in the wilderness...

[Beo]

Don't know what your talking about... hmm hmm hmm... nope that seems to escape me and I have no rick-ollection of that. He is in Tennessee with his mother on vaction and keeping his mouth shut and working his azz off now since he got a job.

[Rick]

Sure miss that kid. Has some great stories to tell.

[Beo]

Yeah I miss him already, he won't be going on the trek next weekend cause he's in Tn. But the stories he told... yeah thats good too, good he ain't telling them.

[Teotwawki]

... Lesson learned - heed undertow warnings. Seriously...

There is yet another waterfall near us. NPS has big signs posted for No Swimming - Strong Undertow. Apparently there is an underwater cave under and behind the waterfall. Every year, despite the big signs (here's yer sign), several drownings make the news from someone(s) not heeding the warning.

Couple years ago a me, a buddy, his two boys, and my boy go white water rafting. Parked the car at one end, got dropped off at the starting point below a dam / lake.

Great rafting when water is released from the Dam. I checked the water release information on the web - it said 10:00. We get started around 8:00 and float slowly down stream... 10:00 no extra flow... lots of boulders, sharp rocks and shallow runs...

11:00 no extra flow... more boulders, more shallows, more bruises...

12:00 no extra flow... making very slow and miserable progress... more bruises from the rocks...

1:00... 2:00... 3:00... no extra flow...

A trip that should have taken about 4 hours was taking a painful and not fun forever to complete.

Trip is maybe 3/4 over and it is getting late and starting to get dark.

I decide my boy and I are bailing out of this little misadventure - I don't want to be on the river in the dark. I try to talk my buddy into quitting and hoofing it back to the car with us. He refuses to give up but sends his younger boy with us - the older stays with him.

We go ashore... start walking and carrying our raft and gear. Dump our gear along side the road figuring we'd come back for it.

Make it back to the end point vehicle and it is pitch black. Buddy not there yet. We wait maybe a half hour - an hour. No buddy.

Start getting worried. Call police. Search and rescue arrives and starts visually searching the river.

They are about ready to call in a chopper to search the river from the air with a spotlight - not much more they can do in the dark...

Buddies young son is freaking out about his dad and brother.

Putt, sputter, backfire, chug, rattle: Here comes this old "mater" pickup truck with my buddy and his son in back. They had bailed out after dark and had gotten a ride back... so all ended well but it could have been a tragedy.

Go back to get abandoned gear - gone.

Now here is my big secret mistake (shhh... don't tell my buddy): I misread the information on the website about when the water would be released.

10:00 PM not AM

[Jericho117]

Most of it has to deal with making things, like my first bow 4 years ago, it was a freshly cut sapling bent and strung. The cast on it was so poor I couldn't even hit a frog from 3 feet away. But I had no knowledge of how to make one back then. And that time I cooked my first frog, They were a little raw still and I got some intestinal bacteria, maybe salmonilla, and a day later I had to go to the toilet a lot, I didn't vomit but something else. And when I set my first bow trap on a whitetail trail, of course I had to forget where it was so everytime I went to the woods I had the thought that at any second I could be hit with an arrow ( I well camoflauged the bow off to the side of the trail and used fishing line for the trip wire). I found it a couple days later and I almost tripped it (caught no deer). One time I tried stealing a Goose's egg ( there was 3, I only take 1 from them to respect them), and the male Goose was guarding the nest so I got bit pretty bad, but I got the egg. I didn't know Geese could bite so hard. I have a lot of other small mistakes. that was all long ago.

[Dennis K.]

Not a wilderness adventure unless you consider the ocean a wilderness. **snip** R-E-S-P-E-C-T. Mac

Yep. The ocean is a wilderness.
What amazes me is that "wilderness" can be pretty darn close to civilization when one suddenly finds themselves at the mercy of Mother Nature.

[Beo]

I agree the ocean is a vast wilderness, and a dangerous one.

[Rick]

I set my first bow trap on a whitetail trail, of course I had to forget where it was

So someone else could have walked through and been sliced and diced. Never leave a booby trap of any kind armed in the woods. People die that way. Yeah, I know nobody is ever in those woods and you found it before anyone was hurt and on and on. Just don't do it.

[Beo]

Sick'em twinkie!

[trax]

Never mind sic 'em twinkie, anyones gonna set any kind of trap and forget where they left them! stay out of any woods I'm traveling in, that's just bullsh*t

Or if you're that forgetful, maybe look down your rifle barrel to see if you remembered to load it...NO DON'T that's SARCASM

[Beo]

I am in total agreement, but coming from Jericho it doesn't suprise me.

[Jericho117]

It was a mistake I made long ago, four years to be exact, I don't do that anymore.

[Jericho117]

The bow trap I set was at least 1 mile into thick bog territory, I had numerous other non-lethal traps back there so I had to constantly remember where all of them were located. I don't leave my sign near my traps for obvious reasons. The bow trap was too well hidden, and believe me I put all my effort into finding it before someone got hurt. It's an honest mistake. I never knew I could be attacked like that by everyone for confessing a mistake, lol.

[Jericho117]

I don't own a gun

[Rick]

Teaching, lad. Teaching. Dumb things in the wild sometimes hurt people. Best not to do that.

[Beo]

As long as you learned from the mistake your cool, and trust me my son told these johnny butterbutts about my mistakes and you'll hear about it, but its a learning thing and all in good fun.

[Ole WV Coot]

The main cash crop of WV is watched carefully and is well guarded. Most of the local "farmers" are Vets and most of the '60s era. I think they have used everything but mines to guard their hillside farms. They learned good thanks to Uncle Sam. The younger cops don't really know what to look for so they don't look too hard. I spot one I ignore it, don't worry about the growers since they know me but the bow bit to try to kill a deer is a little much. I actually heard a motor running out in the middle of nowhere, too rough for an ATV in that area, walked a mile or so and saw a man using a rototiller to cultivate his crop. How he got it in there I have no idea, I just charged quietly to the rear and outta there.

[Beo]

Turn in the dope growers!!! Narc on them!!! Its illegal so snitch on them but do it covertly

[grazer]

Have to admit a couple myself, starting when I was real young and in the boy scouts on my first camping trip in maybe 1967. I went to a stream for some water, and it was down a long drop, maybe a hundred feet or so, to the creek. Being who I am, I sort of got distracted by all the stuff around me, the plants, the rocks, the bugs, you name it. After a while I figured I better get back with some water, so I filled up the big old jerry jugs that ended up weighing as much as me, and looked around and realized I had wandered so much I didn't have a clue where the campsite was. I took my best guess and got to the top of the bank and everything looked the same wherever I looked, but no people. So, I figured I'd climb a tree to see if I could see or hear anything. Up I went in the biggest tree nearby, and when I got up there and started looking around, I heard a yell, and someone was pointing and laughing. You can guess the rest of the story. Lesson: pay attention to where you are and what you are doing and check your back trail.

Another time I went camping with some buddies in northern Minnesota in maybe February (we preferred winter cuz there's no mosquitos). We built a shelter and packed a foot and a half of snow on it, and had a a fire banked for heat, but it was still damn cold, it got to about 30 below that night. In the morning, I crawled out and sat on a log and stretched my numb feet out toward the fire. A couple minutes later the guy across from me snorted coffee through his nose and started laughing hilariously. I asked him what his problem was, and he said my feet were on fire. Sure enough, I looked and my socks were smoking and had big holes all black around the edges. My feet were too numb to feel it. Lesson: pay attention to numb parts you can't feel and the numb lump in your skull.

Then there's the time I went canoeing and camping with a friend. We paddled for about an hour and then had the idea to rig a sail with a tarp we had with us for shelter. We stopped at an island and cut some poles and rigged a sail and sailed with the wind for about an hour and made good time. We found a big island and decided to set up camp and explore. We made a shelter and set up camp, and off we went. We found a big stand of tall grass and decided to cut a bunch of it to sleep on. We pulled out our knives and were cutting some by bunching it together and hacking it with our knives, and laying it in big piles. We were yakking and jawing like a couple of damned fools, and I grabbed a big bunch of grass to whack at it, and just then my buddy slashed down with his knife to cut his grass, and whacked my finger. Now, we had a habit of sharpening our knives to see how sharp we could get them, so even after cutting a bunch of grass, the knife made short work of my finger. I yelled and jumped back (sort of late) and looked at this big spurt shooting out about a foot from out of my finger. We knew our adventure was over. At the campsite I wrapped it in a sock and taped it up while my friend went to start the motor we had brought for emergencies. It did not start, of course. We had not checked it before we left. So, we had to paddle back. Against the wind. To the car, to get back to civilization. Lesson: check your stuff before you go, and have a plan for everything possible.

[Blood Groove]

Well one time (like three months ago) I was in the woods cutting a thick log with my dull machete for a fort of mine. (I was making it there so I could watch a red-tale hawk nest) One of my whacks with the machete was a little angled and the thing bounced off, and hit my leg. I pulled up the machete and looked at it, then I was pretty relieved that it didn't cut me. Of course that was until I saw the rip in my blue jeans. So I rolled them up, and there was a cut on the shin that went right to my bone. So I rolled down the leg walked home, and filled the cut with some off brand neosporin. Then I was forced against my will to get stiches whick coast tons, and didn't leave with a good enough scar!! The real mistake of this story was getting the stiches.