The Greatest Stories Of Making Great Men

Rocky Leflore: Welcome to The End of The Line podcast, I’m Rocky Leflore sitting in the Duck South studios in Oxford, Mississippi.

Nobody’s joining me on the other end of the line, I’m bringing you another greatest of episodes. Today, I am bringing you 3 of probably the greatest medical emergency moments in podcast history at The End of The Line podcast. There were moments of great people, that at the time they were really bad, these guys did not let those moments define who they were. Let them make them into the great person that they are today. First off, we’re going to start with Pat Pitt. Pat had a heart attack while in a duck blind at the L’Anguille lounge and Pat tells us about that and how he recovered from that and how he made it out of that pit to the hospital that day. And Patrick man, they really go into great detail telling that story. We’ll get to that right now. I want to – I think the best story, start this out with is one that your dad was talking about today. Patrick, you saved his life in the middle of the rice field in Arkansas.

Patrick Pitt: Yeah.

Rocky Leflore: I want you to – that peak when Mr. Pat told me that story, I’m sitting there with my mouth open and we’ll get to the – we will cover family history and the history of Mr. Pat. I want to start this off with that story. Because I think it will show the closeness of you two.

Pat Pitt: Well, to begin before this came about, you’ve got to understand that Patrick and Stephen both were prepared for something to go south. And the reason being because now they grew up with tough love. I mean, I rode them like a rented mule a lot of times because when you put a shotgun in the kids hands, that’s a tremendous responsibility and I did my dead level best to teach them to think. Luckily Patrick was thinking a lot more clearer than I was at the time, I just knew that from what little bit I remembered from my biology days that this wasn’t just a muscle cramp. I mean, I knew exactly, I’ve tried to deny it at first. I tried to deny myself –

Rocky Leflore: So, were you in the blind by yourself that day, Mr. Pat?

Pat Pitt: Yeah, I was in the pit by myself, there was another guy headed out that way but –

Patrick Pitt: Jeff had made it out there with you by the time it all went down.

Pat Pitt: Yeah, well about time Jeff got there but I killed a duck that fell and hit what we were thawing. It fell and hit the ice and slid up under it, so I walked out there with the dog to break the ice loose so he could get the duck because obviously he couldn’t see it under the ice and on the way back, that’s when it started and I got back in the pit and I mean this was January, the what son? 16^th?

Patrick Pitt: I think that’s right.

Pat Pitt: Cold. But I was sweating like a democrat doing math. I mean it was pouring off. I mean, the pain started in my arm going numb and rotating all the way up into my chest, shortness of breath and I mean by the time Jeff got there I said, I don’t even know if I said hello, how’s your mother or nothing. The irony of this is, we don’t use 4 wheelers at our club for several reasons. We use them before the season to haul step to the pits, but I don’t like riding up to the farmer’s fields and they appreciate that. I don’t like roaring out there with lights on and mudslinging before daylight and running all the ducks out of the field, it’s just like, waking somebody up out of a good sleep, they don’t want to sleep here the next day. But we just happened to have one because we were doing some work on that pit that we needed a 4 wheeler to carry some stuff out there. And Patrick and taking it back to the truck and already had it loaded on the trailer, I think son, didn’t you?

Patrick Pitt: Yeah, I had it loaded and strapped and everything.

Pat Pitt: Yeah. Well, I mean he was going to come out there with me when I called him. You know, the funny thing about it, Patrick’s a lot like me, I mean he’s hardheaded and opinionated but normally when I asked him a question or tell him something we’ll have a 30 minute argument but I guess he needs in the tone of my voice that this wasn’t a head cold.

Patrick Pitt: Yeah. It was kind of the same way like you were talking about not chit chatting with Jeff, when I answered the phone, the first thing you said was come get me. And I could tell in your voice that something’s ain’t right, you said come get me, I don’t feel good.

Pat Pitt: Well, it was an effort to talk, I can tell you that.

Patrick Pitt: But then I knew it wasn’t – I know you well enough that – if you didn’t feel good, you’d have killed your ducks and then walked out and let Jeff out there.

Pat Pitt: Yeah, well, I’ve done that before.

Patrick Pitt: Yeah, right away.

Pat Pitt: Yeah, well I used to tell the boys that hell if I die in a duck pit, you all go ahead and shoot my limit or if you shoot over the limit, just blame me. Just like, weekend at Bernie’s.

Rocky Leflore: One of my favorites.

Pat Pitt: Yeah, I used to talk about, you get romantic and philosophical said, well man, if I want to die I want to die in the Turkey wood ducks or die in the duck pit or whatever, it ain’t near as much fun as you think it is, because I can tell for a fact on that. But when I called Patrick, he can take it from there because I was everything was kind of a blur for a while.

Patrick Pitt: Yeah, like I said, when he called me, I could tell in his voice that it was more than just your everyday, I don’t feel good, I could tell. And I was kind of like him, I was in denial but that was the very first thing I thought about. Anyway, I unloaded 4 wheeler, I drove out there, I pulled right up to the pit and basically he was standing outside the pit waiting on me, but he was head down kind of slumped over and I literally pushed him onto the 4 wheeler.

Pat Pitt: And he laid me across the 4 wheeler like a deer just about.

Patrick Pitt: And I got him up – when I pulled up he chunked his duck up on the front rack had his shotgun in his hand like so I took that from him and pushed him up on the 4 wheeler and like he had mentioned we were coming off a hard freeze, the ice had been probably 3 inches thick as a matter of fact that morning, was it that – I think it was that morning we’ve had a 4 wheeler out on a different pit trying to break the ice and could get up on top of the ice for the 4 wheeler, I mean it had been thick. But the sun had come out and then it started to get rotten as I was coming out, that dog couldn’t keep up with me, I was in that big of a hurry. Even in that nasty ice and as a matter of fact I wasn’t even on my 4 wheeler so I mean if I tore it up, that would have just been something I would have had to dealt with at that time. But ace couldn’t keep up and because he didn’t know what – he panicked, he didn’t know what was going on, he went got back to pit.

Pat Pitt: The ice was so thick and had been such a big chunks, he just couldn’t get through it and this was a dog that I had some of the most incredible strength, every dog I’ve dealt with.

Rocky Leflore: What were you feeling at this point, Mr. Pat? I mean what were you feeling in your chest or?

Pat Pitt: Oh, I mean it’s like somebody had – you know those dogs’ steaks that cut through the cork screws, you screw in the ground to stake the dog out?

Rocky Leflore: Yes sir.

Pat Pitt: Felt like one of those are being twisted into my chest.

Rocky Leflore: And the bumpy ride on the 4 wheeler back to the truck probably didn’t make you feel any better?

Pat Pitt: Well, no. I mean, I was in such almost a stupor. The only thing I remember telling Patrick was drop the trailer and put on the hazard lights and I’d rest that because he drove – I guess it was what, 15 miles, 20 miles to the?

Patrick Pitt: No, it’s not quite – I mean it’s probably 12-15 to get across Raven and then straight up Highway-1.

Rocky Leflore: Patrick what was – I’m not going to say what was the atmosphere was like, but what was Mr. Pat then? And I mean was he awake was he in and out of consciousness as you’re going?

Patrick Pitt: He was in and out. I talked to him the whole time trying to get him to respond to me. And sometimes he would and sometimes he wouldn’t like I said, I knew he was in and out. And like I told you I knew what was going on but it never entered in my mind and I knew I could get to the hospital faster than the ambulance could get to me and get him back. And I know that’s not always your best scenario, but where we were in such a rural place getting an ambulance to exactly where we were and finding us, I knew I could get him to the hospital faster. But it never ever entered my mind to call 911 and tell them I was on the way.

Pat Pitt: Well, that’s where another story – we just happened – there were some guys from the club in Jonesborough. And at Sam’s or somebody called them and I don’t know who it was, but told them to get to the hospital and tell them that they’ve got a heart case coming in. And I’ve found all this out after the fact of course. The only thing I can remember on that ride was Patrick was trying – he was holding it right under 100 miles an hour so the computer wouldn’t cut the engine off and I can feel him hit the rumble strips, passing people on the right side, so that’s about all I remember form the ride. Except when I got there, I was getting out of the truck and I dropped a shotgun shell and I was trying to pick it up when they came out there with a gurney and then they cut off a brand new pair of waiters, I mean from the waist all the way to the boot.

Patrick Pitt: You had those for a long time.

Pat Pitt: Yeah. But anyway, I don’t remember much once we got there to the emergency room, I remember Patrick leaving and going in and next thing I knew I was on the table with some guy jumping up and down on my chest.

Rocky Leflore: So, did you – I don’t know how the proper way. Did you flat line? You had to have flat lines?

Patrick Pitt: He coded twice. Yeah, I knew it was at least twice to come up twice or 3 times but he coded twice. Everything lined up the way it was supposed to for something like this to have happened. Like I said, I knew waiting on the ambulance wasn’t the right thing to do, even in this series of a situation, but it just so happens and this all happened on a Sunday and you know what hospital staff is like on a Sunday? They’re non-existence.

Rocky Leflore: Yeah.

Patrick Pitt: It just so happened that they had actually had to call the Cath Lab team into the hospital about an hour prior to us arriving for a patient that they brought in from a local nursing home. And they had just finished working that patient up when we showed up. And from the time dad called my phone to the time they had him in the Cath Lab putting stents in was 56 minutes. And they say with the type of heart attack he had, they call it the widow maker, it hit his – what is it, the lower – it was a little lower ascending something –

Pat Pitt: Some lower interior descending artery or something.

Patrick Pitt: Yeah, well they say you have an hour, they call it the golden hour. From phone call was 56 minutes.

Rocky Leflore: What were they reporting back to you as you wait it out in the hallway, Patrick?

Patrick Pitt: Of course, when I got in there and like I said, when they were coming back out with a gurney, he told me, I can’t even really remember what he told me that first time, but he said something about, take care of your mom or something like that. And of course I lost it then. That was the first time, I’ve let my emotions take over and I want to wait in the room and just bawled my eyes out. But I knew where they – from the waiting room I could see the door they went in and of course they closed the door but all I could do was stand there and cry and watch.

Rocky Leflore: So, were nurses coming out and giving new reports of what was going on?

Patrick Pitt: Not at first because everybody was in there panicking with him as he flat lined. And like you said, they did the chest compressions, they broke like 4 of his ribs doing that. They cut off his brand new pair of waiters and he was all pissed off about all this was going on and in the meantime the couple of members that were in Jonesborough showed up and so I finally wasn’t alone but that still didn’t – that door was still closed.

Pat Pitt: You got to understand Rocky, the chest compressions aren’t like you see on TV because they actually cracked my sternum too with the compressions. But when I’d come back when they shock me back and I mean they fried me the second time, they had that thing turn up to well done and I had burn marks all over my chest. They said every time I’d come back I would be combative. I was trying to punch the guy that was jumping up and down on my chest because it hurt obviously and that’s why they kept at it. But I think the last time they brought me back, they shock me 3 times, they levitated me off the table, they said. But that’s when I bit my tongue almost in half.

Rocky Leflore: So and then they got the stents put in.

Patrick Pitt: Yeah, so like then the door finally opened and I could tell that something was still going on. So, in my mind that was a good thing because it’s not like everybody was walking out with their hat in your hand or something. And a nurse came and got me and took me to the door and as they carried him out of that room, headed to the Cath Lab, he told me, he said what happened to my dog? And I was caught off guard because a water fowler and their dog is something that most people don’t know about, unless you have that bond and I have that bond with my dog. But like I still wasn’t worried – I wasn’t worried about his dog, I knew where he was. He still was – So he said, take care of my dog. I said, he’s taken care of you worry about you. And they got him to the Cath Lab and that’s when my brother showed up, he was in the same field that we were in except he was in the opposite end in a lay down blind with a couple of his buddies. And they were shooting mallards on one end of the field out of layout lines and dad and what was fixing to be Jeff and me and another couple of folks were going to shoot out of the pit. But anyway, so Stephen shows up, he couldn’t even talk. He was like, well, he finally got out what’s wrong. And we were probably, I don’t know about 20 minutes from there. They came out of the Cath lab and said that the stents were in and he was recovering. And by this time like my mom still hadn’t showed up. She had to drive an hour and a half from olive branch to get to the hospital in Jonesborough. Like I said, she still wasn’t there for another 15 minutes or so.

Pat Pitt: And then the fun started then for according to what everybody said like everybody that was duck hunting in that area was in the waiting room wearing camo, I know a lot of people in Jonesborough, I’m very fortunate and I mentioned to you about the fraternity of waterfowl hunters and I’m not talking about a bunch of flat brim face painted barrel sticker wearing Neophytes, I’m talking about the fraternity of waterfowl hunters that know each other that have that bond. And it was really uncanny come to hear it, they were fixing to build a new hospital over their 700 and something million dollars. And if the hospital that’s where it is now, had been there when Patrick brought me up, I probably never would have made it to it. But the guy that’s bank owns the mortgage on this hospital or the note. He called the director of the hospital and he said, I want you to go check on my friend, Pat Pitt, this was Sunday afternoon, he asked him what was wrong said, well he’s had a heart attack and he’s at the hospital. And he said, well Dr. White’s there, everything’s under control. And he said, you don’t understand what I said, go check on my friend at the hospital. So, I’m in CCU and the director of the hospital and the director of pharmacology and everybody from anybody on down came walking in of course the nurses went in a state of panic, thinking it was an inspection or something. But they came in just to check on me which I didn’t realize at the time and then after they left the nurses were just like, do you need anything or do you want me to go buy your new shotgun or would you like my car or whatever. I mean they were just falling all over themselves to try to be on the good list. But every day somebody that I knew from Jonesborough would come in and see me. Even when they got me in a room, I was in a room for what, a week I guess after they got me out of CCU.

Patrick Pitt: I think you were in the hospital a total of like 6.5 days.

Pat Pitt: Yeah, but I got to hunt the last day of the season.

Rocky Leflore: How in the world did you hunt with the vibration of a gun on a broke sternum and 3 broken ribs?

Pat Pitt: Very slowly and very painfully.

Patrick Pitt: If you’re going to be dumb, you got to be tough Rocky.

Pat Pitt: That’s right. Well, you got to understand Ace was right at his 7000 duck. And we got his number 7000 retrieve on the last day of the season. Now, it wasn’t easy walking and frankly I had somebody there to carry my gun and that sort of thing. But we reached that milestone with this dog. He ended up going over 8000 a couple of years later but you got to get your priorities straight. And Gaile wasn’t going to argue with me, she knew if I had a good will, I was going to do it, unless they put me in a cell. But I knew what I did not know what I was doing, but I knew what I wanted to do and how I was going to accomplish it. So sure it was a lot of help.

Rocky Leflore: With that happening to you perspective, what in life as far as a perspective change for you? From that point forward?

Pat Pitt: Well, priorities of course, but family, friends, hug them, love them, talk to them every day because you never know when they might not be there. Not to get melodramatic, but what I would code I would go from number 10 on the pain chart to real pretty colors and I was kind of like floating on clouds, just totally serene, no pain, no nothing and then they bring me back on the other side and the pain would amp up all over again. So, I guess you could say I’ve seen heaven and it’s not a bad looking place and of course the first thing some of my buddies said, well at least you weren’t somewhere where it was hot. I guess even as a center, just like a lot of other people, I got a good look at it, but it was graphic. I mean, just unbelievable serenity. So, I got that to look forward to when I do that at least, whatever pain I’m in, goes away.

Rocky Leflore: Next up is one that most everybody that listens to the podcast remembers it hit home with them. It really shook them up when they heard this story. A lot of people had never heard this story before, it was told on the podcast. It’s the story of the day that changed Ramsey Russell forever. And I will say this if you remember this or haven’t heard Life’s Shot Get Ducks story, you need to hear this part, but you need to go back and find where Ramsey was in the hospital after this part coming out of the rabbit hole is what it was called. But anyway, here is put to the fiery test now.

“And that summer – just two weeks really before school let out on May 17th, 1982, the whole world changed, my whole world changed. It was one of the most defining moments, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

Ramsey Russell: And that summer – just two weeks really before school let out on May 17^th, 1982, the whole world changed, my whole world changed. It was one of the most defining moments, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. But I spent the last 36 years not talking about it, ignoring it – not ignoring it, but just burying it. And there’s really a lot of things in life that are just the best forgotten. But I hadn’t forgot that day, in fact, every time I’ve looked in a mirror, every time I wash my hands and every single footstep I’ve taken in the past 36 years, I’m cognizant of that day, it’s just inescapable. No matter how far I travel or anything else in this world, there’s just no escaping the events of that afternoon, it was pivotal. The time I had a Springer Spaniel, I think, I talked about that earlier, we raise Springers and I had a little old Springer Spaniel and she won’t work to flip but she was a good pet. She howled in the covers at night on the bed, but she was a good little pet. And when she wanted them boy, she’d scratched those doors and my mother been on me about getting the doors painted and cleaned up and I came home one afternoon from school, it was just a beautiful day and it’s just that day, middle of May its warm but not hot, everybody is coming home from work, mowing the grass and getting their weeded and sit down on the patio back in the days, you talk to your neighbors at the mailbox and everybody knew everybody just that time of year, just a beautiful pre-summer day, summer was coming around, so before she got home from work, I had gone out and started painting the doors and doing stuff, she came in, in between jobs she went inside and do something. And so I’ve gone out in the store room just a little old conventional neighborhood home, where you got the garage, but then you got that little storeroom at the end of the garage, little narrow 10ft wide or so storeroom, I had to paint those paintbrushes, couldn’t find any mineral spirits, it wouldn’t have mattered whether there was mineral spirits what it was but I use gas weren’t no big deal I was cleaning my paintbrushes and then it happened. And I’ll tell you all to anybody still listening that the next 3 months, 4 months of my life is a real dark memory. In fact, it’s like, I’m 52 years old and if each year of my life was a chapter of a book right there, 15, 16 and 17, it’s like those 3 chapters were just ripped out. You buy this book, 52 chapter long and right in the center on 15, 16, 17 up in that time period where we’re fixing to start talking about, it’s just those chapters are gone, they’re absolutely gone. And everything I remember, let’s say chapter 16 is, it’s just like, a surreal dream and then we can talk about that but it’s just real dark, clip-clip and then it’s just big voids. I think a lot of it – I was telling Rocky one day, I think a lot of it what I remember and don’t it may have been just buried in the past, you put things behind you, forget about it and some of it, I think was just a place I end up getting myself into because of the situation. But long story short as I was cleaning those paintbrushes, pilot light cut on in the storage room and basically –

Jake Latendresse: The door was closed? Let me back you up for a second –

Ramsey Russell: I don’t know, nobody knows. It wasn’t wide open obviously because there was enough ventilation, but was it shut? Was it not cracked open enough, that kind of stuff, my shop teacher talked about fumes and everything else, come on your 15 year old kid, you’re just clean up a few paintbrush, you don’t really think about that, you don’t think about a little pilot light on a hot water heater, doing that kind of stuff, everybody knows you throw a flame around gas, it blows up, but you don’t think about having just a little bit of open container with the gas and stirring paintbrushes for a few minutes as inducing something like what happened. But the event was – the explosion was – it’s just like, when that little arc hits the gas vapor in the carburetors boom, it’s just that combustion and it happened. And later when I saw pictures, years later when I saw pictures, it literally blew the entire storage room wall to face. It just literally blew all that sheet back out into the – it was significant. It blew it out into the garage.

Jake Latendresse: Did you feel the pressure? Like what that reminds of Ramsey is – I was going to say, it reminds me like, I think it’s the hurt locker, where you talked about these or read about these guys that diffuse IEDs and bombs and whatnot and you talk about when the explosion occurs, there’s so much pressure and compression they say that your lungs explode, especially if you have your mouth closed. That’s what happens to people when they die in explosions and in that kind of a situation for it to have enough power and pressure and compression to blow the drywall off of a wall, you must have been, I mean it was unfortunate, yet it was really fortunate because you didn’t lose your life. And I know that’s going to bring up a whole another topic, but I’m looking at like what did you – do you remember what you felt and what you saw at the moment it happened?

“The instant that it happened, I don’t remember anything of course. I know that the heat was enough inside that all the plastic fishing rods and tennis shoes, plastic bait, all that Styrofoam any of that kind of stuff you keep in the store room was gone, I mean, it was just toast.”

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. The instant that it happened, I don’t remember anything of course. I know that the heat was enough inside that all the plastic fishing rods and tennis shoes, plastic bait, all that Styrofoam any of that kind of stuff you keep in the store room was gone, I mean, it was just toast. But what I remember is as I emerged let’s say from that door, what I remember is two things kind of my peripheral vision, my mother having to come apart and I remember the garage door opening to let the smoke out and coming under the garage as quick as it was opening was my neighbor across the street, young man newly married started home, he’s in pharmaceutical sales, became good friends throughout my teenage years he just one of them good neighbors but he was on the scene now what she later described that, she was inside vacuuming or doing something and she heard something and to her it sounded like something had fallen in the attic and she heard me screaming and so she came out to see what was going on. And what he later described having heard was me screaming, my mother screaming and just assuming all them dang Russell boys have tied into it again, because you know my brothers, I love my brother’s to death, we were close brothers but you know brothers, brother fight. And so he come over initially to break us apart because he could hear my mother and I know he must have come over and seen the smoke something going on because when I saw him, I remember seeing him coming under – as the garage door was raising him coming under it, his eyes just as big, just absolutely holy cow and he had a fire extinguisher in his hand. I don’t know, I’ve heard it described. I can’t imagine what he and my mother must have seen, but I do remember in just little bits and pieces. I do remember walking outside the garage. I do remember Rusty’s wife was a RN a registered nurse, I remember her coming around and she wasn’t panicking –

Jake Latendresse: Were you still on fire? Like when they came over there, when your mom saw you there –

Ramsey Russell: No, it wasn’t there.

Jake Latendresse: Okay. So, it was an explosion.

Ramsey Russell: It was just – I was engulfed in a relatively closed area. I was engulfed in flames, like just I engulfed in that and then the heat, that subsequent heat. And I remember pacing up and down my sidewalk, hurting, where’s the ambulance, I remember, just God knows what I was saying, just talking.

Jake Latendresse: You could see? Could you see? Could you see everything?

Ramsey Russell: Oh yeah, I remember, I saw bits and pieces. I don’t remember seeing myself, I was wearing cutoff jeans and a pocket t-shirt when this was going on. And I just remember – and then I remember the ambulance finally getting there and by the time I walked down to the end of the driveway, I know and I was later told that practically the entire neighborhood were sitting at the end of my driveway. I mean, neighbors for 5 or 6 houses seeing smoke coming out here in the commotion. They’ve been sitting there, just minding their own beer after work, minding their own business, drinking cold beer, mowing grass and doing what they were doing, like neighbors do that time and seeing the commotion walked down and then more and more people, some of my best friends from 10 houses down had come and running up. And I know what they later described seeing with skin and flesh and things just in shock. But they didn’t have to tell me that. I didn’t have to even know what it looks like because I can see it. I can remember seeing the looks in their eyes. That’s what I remember, is that you’re looking around you, I can remember seeing, the look of helpless neighbors. The look at their eyes, I can remember seeing the look of helplessness in my neighbors and in my friend’s eyes. And when the ambulance came up, course they didn’t, some reason they were out of some of the little water you pour over that little sailing whatever you put over somebody they found just put some water on me to get whatever cool it off or whatever you do to get some of the debris off and they, I remember laying down the stretcher and them beginning to cover me with a wet sheet and as I was, fixing to be picked up and put into the ambulance, I remember them trying to cover my face with that wet sheet and me yelling, no. I mean, it was serious stuff but let me tell you what, that wet sheet won’t coming over my face. And so I remember –

Jake Latendresse: Because why? What were you trying – what were you scared off?

Ramsey Russell: I didn’t want that wet sheet on my face. I didn’t want to – I wanted to be able to see my mother. Now, understand my mother was 18 years older than I am, so that would have made her 32 years old, its 32 year old mom, it’s a typical 32 year old mom. And as a daddy now, I can’t imagine what she was going through. I can’t imagine what my mother was going through. So she gets on the ambulance with me –

Jake Latendresse: Want to trade places with you. Guarantee you she wanted to trade places with you immediately.

Ramsey Russell: Her crying – I can remember her eye shadow running down her, the black lines running down her face with –

Jake Latendresse: Mascara.

Ramsey Russell: And it’s just – and I just remember. And here’s the funny thing, I was bussing tables and Shony’s back in those days, I was scheduled to go to work that afternoon and I remember telling her on the way to the hospital, call Andy and tell him I’m not going to make it this afternoon, call him. And she’s like, okay. She was like, yeah, but I’m sitting there telling her. And I can remember where we were. I knew from the curve and the bumps in the road we right there by waterworks curve in downtown Jackson when I had that conversation, the whole big arc on the freeway to get around the Mississippi highway patrol. I knew where I was just from the curves in the road even so I’m inside an ambulance. And I remember telling her, I’m not going to be at work and what am I going to do about school? I’ve got test coming up and I really need to pass this class of time, I don’t want to go back to summer school. And I remember – break, I remember being in the emergency room, just a flurry of white coats and nurses and serious voices coming around. I can remember them cutting off my clothes, cutting off my shirt, cutting off my short cutting off my – just cutting and of course –

Jake Latendresse: Ramsey, was anything melted? Was anything melted to you or burned into your skin or anything like that?

Ramsey Russell: I don’t remember, it could have been. And I know it seems like somebody said that there were some things hanging off my clothes when I came out. So, it must have the concussion must have knocked me down inside there, inside that room, it must have knocked me down. Because somebody seemed to say, I don’t recall what, but I do seem to recall somebody later saying that there were items stuck to me.

Jake Latendresse: Did they have to – was there a fire in the room like was the house on fire at that point? That they have to put that out or was just an explosion?

Ramsey Russell: No, they called an ambulance and I don’t know. You know what that’s a good question. I know the house didn’t burn down, I think it was just that heat inside that building melted a lot of stuff damage whatever was in there and blew the sheet rock out into the garage, but it didn’t catch the house on fire. I end up living that house too high school, my mother lived in it for another 10 or 15 years, right there where it was. But I remember them cutting those shorts off and me asking – I was hurting but I wasn’t you know what I mean? And I remember asking for a drink of water. And I remember a nurse walking up to me and placing a piece of ice in my mouth and she said something, just let that melt. And that piece of ice in my mouth and it just gave me something to kind of focus and hold on to and at that point it’s just like cut to the next scene because that’s the last truly failent thought that I had a long time. And for the rest of the story, wherever we go with it, you just got to understand, so much and stuff, I never did remember a lot of it had been buried with 36 years of time and want to forget and the rest of it is just like kind of a nightmare now, let me say this a year later let’s say, fast forward a year, I’m sitting at the kitchen table, I’m back home. I’m a wreck and we’ll talk all about that later, but I’m sitting at home again with my mother, my parents have since divorced, we’re going through the throes of a divorce right there and it’s just she and I were sitting there and there was so much in the next 6-8 months after that event, after that nurse placed that ice in my mouth there’s so much missing, there’s so much that was real. It’s real difficult to discern whether it was reality or like you dream. Now, here’s the deal, when you might hear some of these stories or hear some of these thoughts, it would be natural to say or to assume. Well, of course he was thinking that. Man, they had him medicated high as a kite. No buddy, let me tell you what they don’t do on big trauma like that right there, they do not put the man up to high, so he can just drift away, that is not what they do, that is not it at all. I later learned there was no pain killer for the next 6 months, they needed stuff to heal. Now first we’ll talk about the first two weeks than I’ll get into some other stuff, but –

Jake Latendresse: I was going to say something, Ramsey, that when someone gets injured, okay? Like even if it’s bad as a car wreck and you break your legs or you break your arm or you break your jaw and you have surgery and the your surgeon or your nurses tell you’re going to be in this cast for 8 weeks or even 8 months or a year and a half, whatever it is, that’s one thing but then what happened to you, I’m sure at some point when that all happened where you realized this is the rest of my life, I’m not going to be in a body cast for 18 months and I’m going to get up and then I’m going to rehab and everything’s going to be just fine, you looking at things like this is the rest of my life because I’m burned and I’m scarred right?

Ramsey Russell: Well yeah, but really and true that part of reality really didn’t hit probably until about 5 and a half, 6 months after, 3 months anyway after the event. Because it was so trauma, it was so critical. For example, I learned a year later, when I was home and I was talking my mother one night just trying to sift through memories and just make sense of what I thought I remembered and I told her, I had a dream and we’re along these horrible dreams I had, I had a dream and there were bright lights, real bright in this room and I was looking down the length of my body and very noisy and everybody tried to come through the door at one time and they were putting paddles on my body and I could see my body bucking and it was just this commotion and she was quiet. I was sitting there drinking a cup of coffee and stare at the table, telling her this memory, this dream and she was so quiet, I looked up at her and tears were just streaming off her face onto the table and she said honey, I don’t know how you remember that because that’s the night that brought you in, you died and that is exactly what happened to you. And I think I’m not a doctor, I’m not an expert but you’re technically dead when your heart stops and that little line on the counter starts beeping then flat lining. But maybe your body has to cool off, maybe your brain which is just a recording device has to cool off to a certain point. But I know I remembered it and I described exactly what happened to where it hit her so real later and she said, I just don’t know how you remember that but that is the night we brought you in and you died. And so I’m stuck for the next two weeks – it was two weeks for my 16^th birthday it was just right there in the school year I’m stuck in intensive care unit in Jackson Mississippi Methodist hospital I believe – excuse me Downtown Baptist hospital and that’s where I was. And it’s very critical that the doctors told my parents, they said he’s got an 8% chance of living, 96% mortality rate, he’s going to die. We’re sorry your son is going to die. If he does manage to live, he will lose his right arm and both his legs, it’s that bad. And then where the big – trust me, nobody at the time in Jackson Mississippi ER intensive care unit was prepared for that level of trauma for an extended period. Then like you said, this was going to be major, this wasn’t just okay, you’re in ICU for a few weeks we’ll move into a hotel room, I need a specialized treatment apparently. And that was a big struggle is where do we go? Where does he go? What does he do if he lives? 8% chance of survival at age 15, almost 16 years old. I think my parents had talked to a funeral home, I think they had started thinking about a casket and making arrangements because that’s what the medical science says was going to happened. There was a – at that time in my life, maybe a lot of people listening today, both of you all, there’s an organization called Shriners and all I really knew about Shriners was, they rode this little mini bikes, wore these red hat with a tassel on it at parade. Let me tell you what’s Shriners is, they raised a million plus dollars per day that goes into their charity, which is burned and crippled children. And they’ve got the foremost burn units in the world right here, 3 of them at the time, right here in United States of America and their cutoff date was age 16 and I was right there at it and it just so happens that Rusty, the first guy on the scene, his stepdaddy was a Shriner, was the head of Shriners here in Jackson Mississippi reached out through the network and on my birthday, May 28^th, 1982 I was airlifted down to Galveston, Texas and at that point I couldn’t tell you anything going on. I couldn’t tell you anything except that I knew, I just knew I was being moved to Texas and that’s kind of what – that’s really kind of what I recall.

Rocky Leflore: Next up and finally, as a story with Jake Latendresse. Jake was in British Columbia on the side of a mountain, filming a sheep hunt when his life and filming career changed forever. The story was told way back at the beginning when we started The End of The Line podcast and some of you may not have heard this story, but Jake was – like I said, Jake was on a sheep hunt up in British Columbia and a horse fell on him, did a lot of damage to him and being 8 hours from the nearest city didn’t help things at all. It’s a story of perseverance, getting out of their getting back home and getting healed up and for anybody it should have taken a couple of years to heal up from this, Jake man came back, guns blazing with that camera after this happened. Listen to this story now. I don’t know the word I’m looking for, the word that I’m looking for is not the point across, but the story of how bad it was for you. The whole experience.

“Well, first of all I was up in British Columbia and I have a Swiss client that I filmed quite a few mountain hunts for. And he had hired me to film this hunt and photograph it and so we had gone up there, it’s a long way to get in people that don’t know.”

Jake Latendresse: Well, first of all I was up in British Columbia and I have a Swiss client that I filmed quite a few mountain hunts for. And he had hired me to film this hunt and photograph it and so we had gone up there, it’s a long way to get in people that don’t know. In fact, I’m editing this film now and you’ll see, because I’m editing it in a way that takes the viewer from the beginning of the hunt, all the way to the end of when I got hurt and flew out in a chopper and the whole rescue and the whole thing is in this video. But for people that don’t understand what it’s like to go sheep hunting, it’s an ordeal. It’s not like you wake up in the morning and you go brush your teeth and put your camo on, grab your bow and go climb into a tree. I mean you fly to – I flew from Denver to Vancouver from Vancouver to Smithers British Columbia, which is a town very similar to steamboat Colorado, it’s a ski town and it’s got that western feel to it then at – and Smithers, you get on a float plane. And we got into this 1952 beaver floatplane which was a whole experience within itself. I mean it’s like getting into a Volkswagen bug with wings on it. And you fly for 3 hours through mountain passes around clouds. You’re dodging storms and trying to stay and there’s no line of sight like or autopilots like jets have, I mean this is like driving – you’re driving, I mean you’re just like you’re in an Uber, you’re in an Uber plane through the mountains. And so we finally get to –

Rocky Leflore: From Vancouver to Smithers, what were you in from there? Just a small commuter jet.

“So we had approached, it took us 7 or 8 days, 8 days to find a – what we thought was a full curl ram, it was a legal ram that my hunter could harvest and we spent an entire day, I would say the better part of 10 hours trying to get to this ram.”

Jake Latendresse: No, they have a big airport, not a big airport there but they have airports there that will handle big jets. And I don’t remember what model jet it was but it was 100 passenger plane, it wasn’t a massive Jetliner with 350 people on it but there’s 100 people on the plane. And so we get to Smithers, we get our float plane, we fly into our first base camp and when you fly into your first base camp that’s where you start saddling up, you stay in a cabin overnight and then you get up very early, typically it’s an 8 or 9 hour horseback ride in from that base camp into your sheep camp, which is up in the mountains, typically on a stream or on a river. So we rode our 8 or 9 hours in and really – I guess to make a long story short, we had gone on this sheep hunt and we were there for 8 days sheep hunting in the mountains. It’s demoralizing, it’s tiring, it’s very physical, the air is different, the sun is different, the rain is different, the snow goose is different, it’s just a different atmosphere when you’re up in the mountains, up in the high country. So we had approached, it took us 7 or 8 days, 8 days to find a – what we thought was a full curl ram, it was a legal ram that my hunter could harvest and we spent an entire day, I would say the better part of 10 hours trying to get to this ram, we finally got to him when he bedded down and he stood up and he walked towards us and he got within 180 yards, so we got a really good look at him. And in Canada, the rule is on any ram, it has to either be full curl, which full curl means the tip of one of the horns has to curl up past the bridge of the ram’s nose. So, if you’re looking at a straight perpendicular in a profile direction at his face that curl would come and the tip would exceed the bridge of the nose. Well this or it has to be 8 years old or older. So this ram you got to count the rings on the horns. They’re like growth rings on a tree. You can count them with a good spotting scope. That’s why Swarovski and Leica do so well in the hunting world because the big game world, those guides and hunters need the really high level optics to be able to count things like growth rings or to measure a Billy, a mountain goat’s horns to make sure it’s 9 or 10 inches or whatever it is. So we determined this ram to be 7 years old. So he was a year under what we really wanted but he looked like a full curl ram. But the outfitter and the assistant guide had decided it was so close that we better pass this ram up because if you shoot the ram and he’s not legal man that turns into a whole different scenario with the natural resources department up in Canada, their federal wildlife officers. I mean, that’s a major party foul and the violation is probation for the outfitter, they have the jurisdiction to pull his license and all that. So, the reason I’m telling you this is because that’s what ended our trip. We had 4 more days on this trip, but my hunter was so frustrated and so worn down man, I mean he was worn down to a dub and he just called it quits. He said, I’ve had enough, let’s just go. So we went back to our sheep camp, we slept it off and we woke up the next morning and asked my client again, are you sure you want to give this up? Because there’s a whole lot more country to look for another ram and there’s a lot of room. I mean we used to see a 100 rams day, we just didn’t see the right rams. And I’m sorry, not a 100 rams, 100 sheep a day and 5 or 6 or 8 or 10 rams a day, just not the right ram. So we woke up the next morning, he decided we were going to call it quits, so we packed all of our stuff up. We got all the horses packed up, we folded up camp and we were going to go back to the same base camp to catch our floatplane out. So we had an 8 hour horseback ride to get back to this lake.

Rocky Leflore: Hold on just a second. There’s no telling what is invested in this trip. People don’t realize –

Josh Webb: I was going to say the same thing Rocky.

Jake Latendresse: A sheep hunt cost $40,000-$50,000 nowadays and people don’t realize how much money that the outfitters have. I mean you’ve got a plane ride, those plane rides are expensive, man. A 2 or 3 hour plane ride from Smithers into a backcountry lake on a beaver is expensive. And then you’ve got all that food, all the horses, they got to bring oats and whatnot for supplemental feed for the horses. There’s 4 guys, there’s 2 guides and 2 assistants in camp, a cook, I mean there’s tents, I can’t wait to release this film because I’m editing this film so that you literally as the viewer, you feel like you feel like you’re in the cockpit of the plane, you feel like you’re on the horse riding it through the timber and walking up into the high country and spotting the sheep. I mean, it is the real deal experience and most people haven’t experienced it and for those that haven’t, if you ever have the inclination to do something that stupid, go do it because it’s worth the experience. I mean, it’s a tremendous life changing experience and I think that’s why – I always say one of the most difficult things to explain to people is the joy of suffering. And it’s like an oxymoron when you say it like that but the fact is you ask yourself so many times – every single time I go on a sheep hunt – I’ve been on, I don’t know, probably a dozen sheep hunts now all over the world and every single one of them I’m going, why in the hell am I even here? This is just stupid. I can be home with my family right now, wrestling with Walker on the floor, drinking a beer and here I am in Mongolia suffering, putting myself through this crap and then as soon as it’s done, as soon as you get on your plane to go home, you’re thinking about the next trip and which one you’re going to do next. It’s a very difficult to explain, but it’s a very addictive activity and it’s not for everyone but people that do it, they understand.

Rocky Leflore: My point in asking that was, man it is a – now I guess I’m thinking about it from the regular old Joe’s point of view, you’ve written that check and you’re saying, okay, I’m done. I don’t have my ram, but I’m done.

Jake Latendresse: That’s it. That’s the deal right there. I mean that’s the pivotal point of the hunter. Because he’s got so much invested and for him to just walk away from it, that’s why people that sheep hunt are typically wealthy. They’re either wealthy or they’re do it yourself guys that hunt up in Alaska or the Canadian residents and they’re the hardest working people in the entire hunting world. I promise you that. I mean, sheep hunters are a different breed, it’s a step back in time.

Rocky Leflore: But it has to go back to what you’re saying. This guy had to be just totally emotionally and physically drained –

Jake Latendresse: To say screw that.

Rocky Leflore: Yeah.

Jake Latendresse: He was done. I mean, you know when you’re done, you know what I’m saying? And for him to dump $45,000 in the garbage can I mean, you can’t say that because you didn’t kill your ram, but you still had an 8 day experience it was unbelievable. I mean it was an amazing experience. And so you’re right. It was a pivotal point, we packed all of our stuff up, it takes hours to pack up. So we woke up at 05:30 or whatever time it was and I would say at about 09:30 or 10:00, we were finally packed up ready to go. All the horses were packed up the saddle horses, we got on the saddle horses and the outfitter Jim asked us to ride across the river and just stage over there in the dirt on the other side of the river so that they could turn the pack horses loose. Because in a mountain hunt or any kind of a mountain horseback adventure, you’ve got saddle horses and you’ve got pack horses and the pack horses are carrying these two big pantry boxes, typically, I mean they’re either duffel bags on the back of these horses wrapped in canvas – wax canvas tarps or they’ve got these hard plastic pantry boxes, which is typically what they use because they’re secure and they’re watertight and all that stuff. So we’re staged, me and – I forget how – there was 6 or 7 of us staged on the other side on saddle horses literally thinking about the ride home. God, this is going to suck, we’ve got 8 hours on the saddle again. I just want to get back to the lake to get a good night’s sleep. We had some whiskey and beer back at the normal base camp. So we were looking forward to getting back to – I mean that civilization compared to what we had been living in and the Wranglers started turning these pack horses loose, this is where things went bad. They started turning the pack horses loose and all of a sudden, it was like this loud, it was like the Kentucky derby, they cut all these pack horses loose at the same time and they hit the river and if you’ve never seen a horse walking across the river, like a backcountry river they’re clumsier then hell. Like they can’t, they’re stepping on their own feet, they’re tripping, they’re not falling down, but they almost are, it’s a very clumsy, awkward circumstance for a horse to cross the river like that. And so these horses come barreling across the river and I turned around, my horse started getting nervous, her ears were pinned back, the hair on her back started to rise, when one horse – they’re pack animals, so when one horse freaks out, they’re like deer, they all freak out. And so my horse got nervous, man. And one of the pack horses, when I turned around, it looked like the Kentucky derby coming across the river and it was louder, just going clink, clink, just chaos. And so my horse started bucking and kicking and it’s the first a pack horse that came across the river, freaking hit a tree, hit one of the pantry boxes on a tree and it just went boom right behind my horse and that sent my horse into a frenzy. She started bucking, she was kicking and bucking, trying to get me off of her back, so I had to pull right on her reign, so to keep her head – you want to pull left or pull right, depending on which way the horses going, when they start freaking out and you want to keep their head tight on the reins so that you ultimately go in circles, okay? That’s your goal and then you can ride it out and when things start to calm down, you just let up on the rain, your horse slowly calms down and everybody’s cool, that ain’t what happened. My horse, there were too many pack horses and it took too long and I think my horse, her name was Ely May still is and I think what happened was she – it took too long and she felt trapped with her head pulled tight like that, she felt trapped. So she went up on her back legs, straight up and down perpendicular to the ground, I’ll never forget it, I came off the saddle, I had my camera bag, my pack, my low pro camera bag on my pack, I came off the saddle and I hit the ground, I just slid right down her butt because she was vertical, like the lone ranger’s horse. And she kept coming, she didn’t stop vertically, she kept coming and she inverted, she got upside down and all I saw was horse falling on top of me, so like I kicked back my torso, I kicked back to try to get out of the way, thank God I did when she came down, she came down on her back hip and her back hip came down right on my lower right leg and crushed it. I mean I heard it. When the horse hit my leg and she came to the ground, I heard it go like, I mean I’ll never forget that sound. And that wasn’t it when she came down, she came down on her butt then the rest of the horse had to come down so her head was swinging back like a giraffe because she had so much momentum and I literally had to roll to my left or else her head neck and upper body would have come down on top of my head and she came down and hit the ground and it was just like, I mean, it was like a giraffe hitting the ground, it was just kapoof. And she got up, luckily she rolled to my right, I was to her left and then she got up and man I remember her bit was hanging out of her mouth, it was bent like in a 90° angle from her hitting the ground so hard and she ran off like she literally bolted and ran off into the timber of this ridge and I’m lying there on the ground –

Rocky Leflore: Hold it before you say it, we’ll stop you. There was oh shit, second in there, right? Between the time, you know what just happened? There was an oh shit second that you knew what just happened because you heard it, you heard the sound and before your brain registering and sending those pain signals to your legs.

Jake Latendresse: Yeah, I mean it was scary, I’m not going to lie to you, I knew my leg was broke, I just didn’t know how bad I mean, I knew it. And you could almost smell it. I mean it’s hard to explain people that have been in accidents like that understand. But you just know, so you immediately start thinking – the first thing I thought was okay, I’m going to get up, this is like a bad dream, I’m going to get up and I’m going to stand on my leg maybe it’s just sprain. Maybe I got really lucky, like I always do.

Rocky Leflore: It’s going to make me throw up.

Jake Latendresse: Dude I stood up and my face went white like white, I just had a white out when I stood up on my leg and put weight on my right leg and I went down on the ground and that’s when I started screaming F bombs and calling for my friends. That’s when I started screaming.

Josh Webb: That’s what I was about to ask, how long did it take for the pain or the realization of what really happened to set in.

Jake Latendresse: Immediately, I didn’t know because I had my gators on, I had my rain pants and my boots I just didn’t even want to take it off because I didn’t want to look at it. I had no idea how bad it was, but I knew it was bad. So I started screaming for my friends, the people, the rest of the team, every other word that came out of my mouth was an F bomb. I was just trying to get someone over there because my first reaction was, I get my satellite phone go right up the ridge and call Global Rescue because –

Rocky Leflore: That’s what I was going to ask you Jake, at what moment in all of this is going on? Did it register in your brain, okay, the hospital is not just right down the interstate, I am in the middle of nowhere.

Jake Latendresse: I mean, it wouldn’t surprise me, Rocky if I was thinking that when I saw the horse coming down on top of me. I mean that’s just something that’s in the back of your head. I’ve had Global Rescue Membership for 4 or 5 years now and you never wanted to kick in, but if you need it you’re really glad that you have it. And I keep a tag, man, I keep global rescue tags on all of my bags, my backpacks, I keep one in my passport wallet, I have a screenshot of one on my phone, I have those things everywhere so that if I were unconscious someone came over and looked at me, they probably see it. It’s a red tag hanging off of my backpack and everywhere else, all my backpacks have a tag on it. So someone would identify with making that decision very quickly if I were immobilized or unconscious or whatever. So my friend, these two Wranglers come over first and they got to me and I could just see the, oh shit, look on their face because they could see it on my face. And I said, get my satellite phone, go call Global Rescue right now please, here’s the number. So I gave them my tag, they road up to the top of the ridge they called Global Rescue. And the guy Wade came back down and he said, it’s going to be about 3.5 hours before chopper can get here but they’re on their way.

Rocky Leflore: Jake, I don’t think I’ve ever asked you this question and like I said, we’ve talked about the story a bunch of times. On a trip like this, on a guided trip of course you have first aid kits, what is there? What’s in it for pain though?

Jake Latendresse: You don’t want to know Rocky. I mean, I can’t pull –

Josh Webb: Not enough whiskey probably.

“I mean, I carry morphine with me, I carry Hydrocodone, I carry – I have a full blown medical kit in my bag, in my duffel bag at base camp at all times on every trip that I go on, I have stuff to treat diarrhea, giardia have stuff to treat.”

Jake Latendresse: Man, I carry morphine with me, I carry Hydrocodone, I carry –

Rocky Leflore: You did have that.

Jake Latendresse: Oh yeah. I have a full blown medical kit in my bag, in my duffel bag at base camp at all times on every trip that I go on, I have stuff to treat diarrhea, giardia have stuff to treat. I have ether missin [**01:11:42] for antibiotics for infections, respiratory infections. I have sutures, if I get cut real bad. I’ve got morphine – my physician prescribed some morphine to me for the exact reason why, breaking, having a compound fracture or something where you would need that kind of pain relief. But he prescribed it to me in suppository form. And I remember when he said you need these, you need to put these in your medical kit but I’m going to give them to you in suppository form, so I know that you won’t take them unless you really need them.

Josh Webb: Okay, so – no, go ahead.

Jake Latendresse: So, you know once he came back and said this is going to be a 3.5 hour wait, then the first thing they did, they were very helpful. Those Wranglers and guides, the outfitters, employees they’re prepared for stuff like that because you just never know and people do get hurt. I mean you’re dealing with axes and chainsaws and horses and mountains and loose rocks and just all kinds of stuff, man, so you never know what can happen. They got me comfortable and I started getting really dehydrated, so they brought me a bunch of water. I pulled some snacks out of my camera bag and started eating a sandwich that I had in there because I knew I need to take some painkillers, but I need to put something on my stomach first. So then I had them go and open up one of the pantry boxes on one of the pack horses and get my medical kit out. And I took some Hydrocodone to kill the pain and literally within 30 minutes I honestly didn’t even feel any pain unless I moved and then it was really bad.

Josh Webb: Well, so I’ve got to ask this now, only because I know that you did this, but at what point did you start hitting record on your camera? Because I know you did.

Jake Latendresse: Pretty much right then. When he came back and said this is going to be 3.5 hours, my first thought was, well let’s get comfortable and I might as well film this because what else am I going to do for 3.5 hours? I can’t sit here and complain about this because –

Josh Webb: I’ll never forget that when – and it was probably two days after that when you and I were texting and we were texting back and forth, hey man, how was the trip? And the first thing you replied with, well I have bad news and I was with Katie, my wife and I thought well if he’s telling me he has bad news, then at least he’s alive, so what has happened? And then you go into telling me all this and it wasn’t long before I asked that same question I just asked you, I was like, okay, all this happened and it sucked. And which the next part of the story is going to explain where you were with me and you were texting but I said at what point did you start recording? And yeah, I mean that’s pretty much what you said. You said when we realized that we were just kind of stuck there and no – and which there’s nothing you could do anyway. I mean it’s not like you could rush. I mean there was anything you could do.

Jake Latendresse: What else you’re going to do. Yeah, you got a broken leg, you’re not moving anywhere, so I mean it was just natural for me to grab it as a story and you know what? I had halfway asked my question myself whether I should or not because I thought, well, I wonder if people are going to think that I’m taking advantage of this situation and I’m going to try to make myself look like a hero or something stupid like that. And it wasn’t that at all, it was really about, I mean this may not ever happen to me again. I’m glad thank God right now I’m alive because I’ve got two Children at home at the time and I was really concerned about them and I was thinking about had that horse hit me in the sternum or the head, I probably wouldn’t be awake right now and just all those things, you start just thinking about what could have happened. So, naturally again, I just started telling my story on my camera and filmed everything from laying there, I did a selfie interview, I had one of my buddies hold the camera while I was drinking water and taking some medication and just talking, just waiting this out. And so finally after 3.5 hours I hear the helicopter coming through one of the valleys. And sure enough here he comes, he was on – he didn’t know exactly where we were, we gave him GPS coordinates and that put him within a half a mile of us. So, he was circling around searching for us and we were waving our arms, he finally found us. He circled around, got downwind and came in for a landing and landed literally on the dry part of the riverbed right next to me. And man, I just broke down at that point, I was like, I’m getting out of here, my friends, the Wranglers to pick me up in a very organized medical – I forget what you call it, god what do you call that, when you build a stretcher out of raw materials, what do you call that? I can’t remember. It’s a – whatever. They locked their arms together, four of them did and built a seat for me with their arms and they carried me over to the helicopter and they put me in the seat and my leg was freaking throbbing at that point because I hadn’t moved in 3.5 hours, all the swelling had set in, it was stiff, hard as a rock and it hurt like a SOB. I’m filming all this, I’m literally filming all this and they put me in the helicopter and the pilot starts the helicopter back up and the rotors start turning and man it was just surreal, it’s like everything was in slow motion. And I’m in tears because it was emotional and I’m an emotional sensitive guy anyway and I’m just in tears thinking man, my friends just stay back with me, they helped me, they weren’t going to leave me, they never left my side. They asked they were bringing me water and food and medicine and whatever it was a very humbling experience. So we finally take off and honestly and you’ll see it on the film when we took off, it was a bubble helicopter and I don’t know helicopter models but it was a bubble, one of those small, you know two people in the front and two small seats in the back. The whole thing was a glass bubble. And so I’m filming us lifting off, it was me and the pilot and my client were with us and I’m filming it down and as we took off, it reminded me of the last episode of Mash when Trapper was flying off and Hawkeye was standing there waving at him, I don’t know if you all remember that but that was like the greatest last episode ever of any episodic series in the history of television. But that’s what it reminded me of because I was leaving those guys behind, they still had and it by this time it was, 1 or 2 o’clock in the afternoon and they still had an 8 hour horseback ride ahead of them to get to their base camp.

Josh Webb: They still had to ride.

Jake Latendresse: They rode 3 hours in the night just to get back or 4 hours.

Josh Webb: I’m going to do something right here that’s going to drive a lot of people crazy and say that this is the part where it’s going to come to, to be continued.

Rocky Leflore: Guys, like I told you it was 3 really great stories that you heard today. I know that the podcast is a little bit longer than it normally is, but these are 3 really great stories that have been told on this podcast. I think it really changed the direction. Really shot the podcast to one of the highest rated podcasts in the hunting world that it is today because of these great stories. But these guys, not only we’re brave enough to tell, but they give you a great example to look up too because of the perseverance that they came through this. They didn’t let it define them, it made them tougher, made them stronger, made them strive for success more. I really appreciate you being here, but thank you again for being here for this edition of The End of The Line podcast, powered by ducksouth.com.

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