Pennsylvania Game News - April 2010 - 9

a State Police helicopter was on the way. Great, I thought, now the cat will be out of the bag, but better embarrassed than dead. John still wasn’t aware of how bad things were, but I knew I now had to tell him. I told him I didn’t know how much longer the blind would hold and if we went in the water to swim, crawl or do whatever he had to do to get to the island behind us. I also told him to put his cigarette lighter between his teeth if we went in, so he could start a fire on the island. I knew that neither of us would make the 50 yards to the island in that cold water, but I wanted him to have some hope. In about 15 minutes I heard the chopper and my hopes rose a little, but then the noise seemed to be staying in place on the other side of the island. I could hear one of my deputies, Lou Gable, talking to my wife on the radio, telling her that the chopper was hovering over the hunters as they broke ice to the shore. What a predicament, there actually was someone else stranded in the ice and the PSP didn’t know we also were in trouble. I tried to call my wife on the radio again, but the battery had become too weak. I couldn’t transmit but I could receive. I could hear the others getting help but couldn’t get any for us. I guess you could say I outsmarted myself. The blind was leaning downriver and I resigned myself that this wasn’t going to end well, when I saw a speck across the water. It was Ron, fighting his way to the blind. After what seemed like forever, Ron reached the blind and John and I wasted no time getting into the boat. We retrieved my two downed ducks and fought our way APRIL 2010 at a painfully slow pace toward the York County shore. Ron told us that he had to pick a different route to get back to us because the river was freezing solid and he wasn’t sure he would make it back. He was worried about us, and had he known the blind was falling down he would have really been worried. After we had gone about 200 yards I turned and looked back toward the blind just in time to see it crash down. Talk about cutting it close. Needless to say, the group we were waiting for didn’t show up. John, the rookie, gained some experience that day, but not the kind Ron and I had in mind. There must have been an angel with us that day that held the blind up until we were clear of it, perhaps an old “game warden” who had gone on to his reward. The up side was that we had gotten help for two other individuals who were in trouble. I didn’t tell my wife that it was John and I who needed rescuing, but she found out about it almost two years later when one of my deputies who I did tell accidentally let it slip at a deputy meeting. I didn’t want that meeting to end, because I knew what was coming was not going to be pretty, and it wasn’t. I should have told her, but I didn’t want her to worry. Ron and I had some much better times working together until 1978, when he got promoted to Senior Resident Agent of North Carolina. I guess John Meehan wasn’t scared too badly, as he went on to have a long career with the USFWS. All three of us are now retired, by the grace of that angel on that cold December day.

Pennsylvania Game News - April 2010

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