I put the canoe in.......paddled down river about 20 min and tried to beach it, due to my inexperience at attempting to do this on a moving body of water, the nose dug in but the rear kept turning downstream.....in a flash I hopped out, thinking crap, I really don’t want to get my boots wet.....I couldn’t even touch the bottom !!!!!!
The paddle goes flying, I'm scrambling to hold onto the boat rope with one hand and repeatedly grasp at tree roots along the bank with the other hand....It was scary, I won’t front or try to sound tough about it but I remembered rule #1 in ANY emergency, DONT PANIC !!! That’s what I did, got real calm in about 2 seconds, clenched the boat rope in my teeth so I’d have 2 good hands to work with and swam best I could back to the side. Several broken roots and branches later I was able to climb up a deadfall tree back up to dry land. Whoever created the life jacket, was a genius !!!
What a feeling, it’s been so long as a 43yr old guy that I genuinely felt the thrill of sure danger, injury or death. I’m a family man so I shy away from flirting with it on purpose, but being in a situation like that, no one around to yell HELP for really shows what you’re made of when push comes to shove, I’m sure everyone one here can relate in one of their own moments......
Anyway, the paddle hung up, I was able to fish it out with a tree branch, I tied an extra paddle and all my gear to the canoe anyway because I mentally prepared to maybe flip the boat (the 5 P’s) that day,lost the hat I was wearing, not my favorite and the canoe didn’t flip and was lashed to the bank.
Did a bit of scouting in the that spot, saw a few tracks and left. I spent the next 3 hours paddling down river to the put out spot, called Uber and had the guy drive me back to my truck, then drove back to get Betty Lou....my blue canoe
To sum it all up, the river is wide, deep and has mostly high banks, lots of sunken trees and strainers in it so going in to hunt that way is not an option for me. It was a fiasco at best during broad day, there’s now way I’m attempting to do what I did under dark skies.
You scout new land to learn it, I got my crash course that day.
Going back Sunday to scout on my bike and with my drone. Take the foots paths back in and walk out to a few spots I marked on the Garmin. My chest waders will be coming along, I plan to hit some marshy areas that are well over knee deep......BEAST MODE
