Hunter took his usual mountain route but got buried under snow — his wife’s one routine habit became his sole lifeline
A seemingly annoying habit can come in handy in difficult scenarios. A hunter's wife was used to overpacking his bag every time he went out to hunt. However, the man had no idea that the habit would actually save his life. The hunter, Ron Dailey, was out on a hunting trip in Fresno County mountains when he lost his way. The man had been to the area multiple times and had an inkling that he was at the wrong place. But couldn't get out because of a variety of reasons. He survived the wilderness for three weeks because of his wife's overpacking, per Your Central Valley.com.
"I've been up to the top of Swamp Road probably a dozen times. I wasn't lost, but… I couldn't get out. But I never really considered myself lost. I just knew that I was in trouble because nobody knew where I was," Ron recounted. The man was around 10 feet off and ended up on the wrong route while backing up his vehicle. He ended up on a trail meant for jeeps and knew his truck wouldn't be able to get through. "The other road was back over here, to the left of me, further. And then as soon as I went off the first ledge, I went, 'This isn't the right road.' And I look up, there's a tree down there a little ways in front of me, got a diamond with a jeep on it and I go, 'Oh, no, no, no, I'm in trouble.'"
There was no potential way for the truck to get on the normal path, so Ron was stuck. "I'm sitting there looking down the canyon and I'm going, 'Well, maybe this will feed out the bottom and I'll come out over there by Tamarack somewhere or something.' And it didn't. It just went down there about a mile, maybe two. Then I got down there and it stopped. And so I got out and walked around and I go, 'Oh, man, this ain’t going to feed out. I can't get through this.' So I turned back around and drove back up." Ron had to stop at one point because of the snow. But then his truck was covered in inches of deep snow by the morning and he had to wait around four days for the snow to melt.
Ron was then stuck on another path for around 15 days. Although there was no snow, he couldn't start a fire. But because his wife had overpacked his bag with warm clothes, he could stay warm during those days. "In my backpack, my wife always packed me plenty of hats and things to put on my head and gloves; I had like eight pairs of gloves." The man could also make a signal for help out of a silver blanket his wife had given him. Ron hadn't eaten for five days when the end of deer season was arriving. He hoped that hunters would arrive for last-minute deer hunting. The man walked for 12 hours and prayed for help. He spotted headlights soon enough and three hunters found him and got him out.
The man had used a solar charger to charge his phone and send messages to his wife, but none of them could be delivered. "I messaged all my kids, apologized to them that grandpa probably won’t be there for the rest of your lives, but I'll be watching you from heaven. And that was probably the saddest part of my time up there, is making these messages because you don’t want to tell your loved ones you’re going to die." Ron had lost a lot of muscle mass as he tried to use his food supply for an extended period of time, but was recovering well, per the Fresno County Sheriff's Office. The man was seeing a physical therapist and a psychiatrist. He expressed that he was done with hunting for now.
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