Lost Hunter’s Ordeal. Is It Too Unbelievable?

I may get ridiculed for some of what I am about to write but I have to at least ask the questions that I’m sure many of us have asked. First, let me say that I am extremely happy that 53-year old Steven Wright of Woodford, Vermont, who was lost in the Maine woods near Tumbledown Mountain during a recent hunting triop, was found safe and has since recovered.

Wright was hunting this area with two other buddies during a snowstorm. When Wright decided it was time to head back to the truck and meet up with his companions, a series of events caused him to spend three days and two nights in the woods.

The Bennington Banner has an article today recounting Wright’s adventures as was told by him. This is the first chance I have had to read accounts as told by the lost hunter himself. I had received all the press releases and updates being put out by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. Prior to reading this article, I only had a couple of questions. After reading this, I have a bunch more.

Wright is described as being “an experienced hunter and outdoorsman”. According to the article, it began snowing there around 4 a.m. and by the time the hunters left camp, there were six inches of snow on the ground. Wright saw deer tracks crossing the woods road he was on and followed them. He says that about 300 yards from the road, he spotted the deer.

By his own account, he saw the deer again about an hour later and says he should have had the deer but didn’t and doesn’t give any explanation as to why. Once again according to the article, Wright continued to follow the deer “for some time, winding his way through the woods.” At some point he decided to call it a day and head back. This is where it gets interesting.

Wright said he knew where he was supposed to go by his instincts but decided he would refer to his GPS device to find out how far it was back to his truck. He claims the device was telling him to go in another direction.

Confused, he decided to take out his compass and by some strange coincidence, it too wasn’t working. He said he couldn’t get it to read the same way twice.

“I could not get my compass to read the same spot twice. I’ve never had a problem with it,” he said. “You get a little nervous when your compass is not working. That’s all right, I’ve got my GPS,” Wright said.

Apparently his GPS was telling him the truck was about a mile away and he didn’t believe that to be the correct information. So, according to Wright, when it was time to head out, his instincts were telling him where to go and his instincts didn’t agree with his GPS and his compass isn’t working. As a footnote here, after Wright was found, Maine authorities took the GPS and was able to determine the path Wright took until he turned the GPS off in a gravel pit.

Wright opted to follow what the GPS was telling him which he claims was leading him straight up Tumbledown Mountain.

This is where I begin to have several questions. First let me say that in this article, much of the information being told to the reporter is quite detailed. When someone gets lost, often with a certain degree of panic setting in, thinking becomes unclear and also you memory of what you did is sometimes non existent. Wright is described as being experienced. Reports that came from the MDIFW say that the hunter left his survival pack back at camp. Of course that was a mistake.

I’m trying to put myself in that situation which may or may not be the right thing to do. If I’m hunting an area like this, which sounds like he has been to before but doesn’t know real thoroughly, my thought processes are much different than if I’m in an area I know real well.

So, here I am hunting in snow. I’ve decided to head back. I’m confused at my GPS and my compass doesn’t work. What are the odds of both a compass and a GPS failing? Why not backtrack? I’m hunting on snow. I’m leaving tracks. Was it snowing so hard that his tracks could not be determined anymore?

Let’s say his GPS was working properly, which according to MDIFW it was until Wright shut if off. If the direction it was telling him to go was straight up Tumbledown Mountain, then isn’t it correct to conclude that he would have to have gone all the way around the back side of the mountain from where he began? Assuming of course that his GPS plotted course back to the truck was a straight line. If that were the case, then wouldn’t an experienced hunter and outdoorsman, who we should assume knew how to use his GPS, reconfigure his track so as not to have to go up and over the top of Tumbledown Mountain?

During his journey up Tumbledown Mountain, somewhere he fell into water – twice. During his interview he tells the reporter that if his truck was where his GPS was telling him it was, “they would have had to put it up there with a helicopter”.

Now wet and frozen, Wright makes his was back down the mountain, supposedly still following the directions on his GPS. He comes to a woods road. Here’s an interesting part of the story that I didn’t pick up on initially. Here’s how it reads:

Wright then made his way back down into a valley until he came to a logging road. He walked for several hours, watching the sun disappear, passing a gravel pit and a camper. He chose not to go inside, though.

Before I get into the camper part of the story, here’s what came to me. When he decided to head back to the truck, in this accounting he doesn’t say what time that was. Of course this could be important in trying to determine how far he had gone while tracking this deer. How much time had elapsed from the time he headed up Tumbledown, fallen in twice and gotten wet and now come upon a logging road? I don’t know but look what it says. It says that Wright “walked for several hours watching the sun disappear”. This makes no sense at all to me.

If he is watching the sun disappear, then he certainly knows where west is. How long has the sun been out? When did it stop snowing? Is using a GPS turning an “experienced” hunter into one that doesn’t know general directions before setting off into the woods?

The sun is disappearing, which means it’s getting dark and it is obvious that Wright doesn’t know where he is or how to get out. He claims that at the point where he fell into the water a second time, the GPS was still telling him the truck was only 300 yards away.

He passed a gravel pit and a camper.

“I was gonna go in it, but the door wouldn’t open,” he said. “I said, ‘well, I’m not going to break into this camper. It was my stupidity. Why? I’m gonna be out of here by daylight anyway.”

Even though Wright seems to be recalling what he did, I have to question whether or not he was thinking clearly at all. He fell in the water and says his GPS is telling him the truck is 300 yards away. He has walked for “hours”. Is this the point where he turns off his GPS? Wardens say he turned it off in the gravel pit. Then Wright says his thought process was that he would be out by daylight. How did he know that? What is telling him that he will be out by daylight. You either know where you are or you don’t. He admits his stupidity in not breaking into the camper.

An experienced hunter and outdoorsman would have stopped before dark, built a fire and shelter and planned to spend the night there. Wright can’t be thinking at all clearly. The first rule of thumb when you realize you’re lost is stay put. He didn’t do that. At some point of the interview and it appears near the end of the article, Wright says he was never lost.

Wright maintains that he was not lost. “I just trusted an instrument that put me in a situation and it snowballed from there,” Wright said. “Other than that I would have been back to the truck and home. None of this would have happened. A chain of events just kept me from doing what I needed to do.”

Wright says he walked through the night. Why didn’t he find shelter or build a fire. Here’s what he says.

“You think of all kinds of things like, ‘let me cut some pine boughs and make myself a little shelter,’ but you know, that’s fine to tell somebody,” he said. “I didn’t have the time or the energy to jerk around and spend an hour doing something.”

He didn’t have the time or energy to build a shelter but he walked on through the night. Another indication that either Wright was not thinking clearly or he wasn’t the experienced hunter and outdoorsman many thought he was.

The next day, Wright suffers from snow blindness. I’m getting even more confused. Let’s recap briefly. According to reports from the MDIFW, Wright reached the gravel pit around midnight. He claims he walked on through the night. How far did he go? The sun came out and at some point he became sun blind. He says he tried to continue on for about a half hour but couldn’t see.

“It wasn’t my glasses. I was finally going blind,” he said. “It was like half my eyes were looking through an iceberg. I walked for another half an hour and then everything got screwy on me. The roads were going in every direction. At this time I’m getting down to the point where I can’t even see my hand.”

He tried to turn back and get to the camper but couldn’t see. He said he walked back and forth on the logging road to keep moving for most of the day.

If Wright walked all night and if in fact he had been at the gravel pit at midnight, how far did he travel and in what direction was he walking? He is still on this one road. If the sun rose at around 5 a.m. then from the point of the gravel pit to the crack of dawn was approximately 5 hours. How long after the sun came up did he come down with sun blindness?

“Everything got screwy on him”, he said. Then the article says that Wright turned back trying to get to the camper. Are you kidding me? How many hours away is this? Isn’t he lost? Wright says he was never lost. Was he lost or wasn’t he lost?

While suffering from sun blindness, he hears a plane overhead.

“I could hear a plane go by my. I kind of put my arms out. I thought I heard it kill the engine a little bit but it just kept on going,” Wright said.

I think that if I had just spent the night in the woods and I had two hunting buddies expecting me to return that afternoon, I would assume, lost or not, that people were looking for me. But suppose I didn’t think that. I’m blind. I don’t know how long this will last. Do you think I’m going to “kind of put my arms out”.

From that point on, details in the article are sketchy. It says Wright spent the night in a ditch curled up in a ball. He had a difficult time getting out of the ditch in the morning but once he did, he said he was going to try to find his way back to the camper.

Wright says he was in a lot of pain and couldn’t walk very fast or far but he did manage to crawl down over an embankment to get a drink of water. This is when the snowmobile, driven by Donald Eisenhaur of Madrid, went by. Eisenhaur didn’t see Wright down in the brook.

Fortunately, a short time later Eisenhaur returned and brought Wright safely out.

This entire story is nuts. When incidents like this happen, we take them and try to learn from them. We can use real life accounts to educate others on what to do and not do when we’re lost in the woods. I, like everyone else, try to second guess and make some sense out of what happened.

I certainly hope that Mr. Eisenhaur has learned an awful lot from this episode but I have my doubts that he has learned perhaps the most valuable lesson of all. And for that proof, I’ll leave you with what he said once again.

Wright maintains that he was not lost. “I just trusted an instrument that put me in a situation and it snowballed from there,” Wright said. “Other than that I would have been back to the truck and home. None of this would have happened. A chain of events just kept me from doing what I needed to do.”

Evidently none of this was his fault.

I’m glad he’s home safe and sound with his wife and kids.

Tom Remington