A US deer hunter crawled and dragged himself across brush in Utah’s Uinta Mountains for more than 11 hours after a rollover crash left him badly injured.
Jake Schmitt was hunting for deer on July 20 when his side-by-side vehicle’s right rear tire went over the edge.
“I’m just slowly going over like a capsizing ship, and it just went with me and my body,” Schmitt said.
Know the news with the 7NEWS app: Download today 
The vehicle rolled down the hill, over him on the first roll and ejecting him on the second, he said.
He never hit his head and never lost consciousness, but Schmitt suffered significant injuries.
He broke his left leg, both his tibia and fibula, fractured his ankles and broke a few ribs.
“And bruises and scratches everywhere you can have it,” Schmitt said.
Schmitt couldn’t find his phone amongst his belongings scattered on the hill. But he did find his duct tape and with his belt, secured his leg to a part of the vehicle’s roll cage that had broken off.
He said he alternated between crawling and dragging himself as he made his way back to his truck across a nearly four-mile (6.4 km) stretch of brush.
“Everybody wants to act tough, but I wanted to give up every time, all the time — but it’s like, either I die here, or I figure out how to keep going,” Schmitt said. “That was it.”
When it grew dark, he was able to see by the light on the collar of his 6-year-old German short-hair pointer, Buddy.
“That little circle on his collar — I turned it on, and he would heel,” Schmitt explained.
“He was very well-trained, so he would heel when I needed to see where I was going and see if I could drink water out of the creek, and we would drink water out of the creek together.”
After he finally reached his truck, he drove to a diner where someone called 911.
He would not have made it without Buddy, he said.
“I couldn’t have done it without him,” Schmitt said.
“It was like having your best friend there just to kind of nudge you like, ‘keep going, keep going’.”
Stream free on
