Jake Schmitt, a Utah hunting guide, went into the Uintah Mountains on July 20 to scout for mule deer. He was looking for a big buck in summer velvet that he knew was in the area. Schmitt left his truck on a forest road and drove into the mountains in a UTV, prepared with plenty of gear. He also brought along Buddy, his six-year-old German shorthaired pointer.
The next morning, Schmitt crawled out of the mountains — barely alive — by following his dog, who he now credits for saving his life.
The Roll
The trail Schmitt started up in his side-by-side was steep, and it got sketchier as he and Buddy climbed. He started to doubt whether they could make it all the way up the mountain, and he figured he’d hike instead of driving the rest of the way. Schmitt had seen a mule deer buck from a distance earlier in the day, but he’d also been delayed on his way uphill.
“Fifteen minutes before I wrecked, I came upon an elk calf caught in a trap,” Schmitt tells Outdoor Life. “I stopped, got out with my dog, and wrestled the elk calf out of the trap. To me, trapping in a calving area seems ignorant. We need every elk calf we can get. She walked away fine, but it was a hell of an experience.”
After that release, Schmitt rounded a bend and partially drove up an incline. Then he thought better of it and started reversing to park at the bottom of the hill. He thinks one of his tires may have hit a stump. He never saw it.
Schmitt tried to bail before the side-by-side rolled, but he was only halfway out when the vehicle flipped. The machine crushed him on the first roll, then shoved him through the windshield on the next. His left leg was broken — both his fibula and tibia. He also had a dislocated right shoulder, broken ribs, broken ankles, and sprained wrists, and he was covered in cuts and bruises.
“I was beat up like a rag doll,” Schmitt says. “I stopped rolling, then assessed my legs while I could still hear the side-by-side rolling. And it was still running, so in my mind I’m thinking, ‘I don’t want to be the guy who dies out here and starts a wildfire.’”
The Crawl
The UTV rolled 15 to 20 times before coming to rest at the bottom of the incline. Somehow, during all that tumbling, Buddy must have escaped the vehicle. Because by the time Schmitt slid down to the crash, Buddy’s soft-side, zippered crate was still strapped in the bed, but the pointer wasn’t in there.
Schmitt looked around for his other gear, which had been thrown out and was nowhere to be found. The UTV was missing its roof, roll cage, and all four doors. Around dusk, he tried standing up for the first time and saw that Buddy was right next to him.
“No lights, no phone. Pistol, rifle, inReach, all gone. It was a yard sale,” Schmitt says. “Everything was gone but my dog.”
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He was able to find a roll of duct tape in the wreckage, and he gathered some pieces of the UTV, which he used to form a makeshift splint for his broken leg. Cinching it tight with his belt, he tried to set the bones best he could.
“I wouldn’t say I’m proud of myself, but I’m happy with the knowledge that I had,” he says. “We live in a world where we have a thing for this and a thing for that, but when you get shipped down a mountain and it all flies away from you, that stuff doesn’t mean anything. You need to know self-rescue.”
Then he began his long, slow crawl in the dark. Buddy never left Schmitt’s side, and every time he stopped dragging his body from exhaustion, the dog would keep moving him along.
“When I passed out,” he says, “my dog would nudge me or sit on me to wake me up.”
The two had to cross around half a dozen creeks. Buddy would allow Schmitt to set his heavy, limp broken leg on his back until they made it across. Buddy also had a collar with a built-in LED light, which gave Schmitt enough light to see and something to follow.
“It’s the greatest light I’ve ever seen in my life. I turned it on, and I could see five feet in front of me. So, I kept crawling.”
The Recovery
When Schmitt started his crawl, he estimated it would take him about three hours to make it back to his truck, parked roughly 5 miles away. He then planned on driving himself to the closest town of Oakley.
He eventually made it, but as he neared his vehicle, he noticed a light coming at him that wasn’t attached to his dog’s neck. He thought it was a spotlight, but it wasn’t. It was the sun rising. He’d crawled with Buddy’s help for 11 hours straight.
“I don’t think I’d be talking to you now if that dog hadn’t been there,” Schmitt says. “I don’t care how tough you are. Everyone wants to give up when it’s excruciating, but he’d come over and make me feel good enough to get right back up.”
Schmitt is moving slow for the next four to six weeks. He has a rod and screws in his leg, along with roughly 100 staples. His joints are mending, his bruises fading, and the swelling and the pain are all receding. There’s a GoFundMe account to help him with medical expenses.
He still plans to guide hunters this fall, and he’s already plotting his return to the scene of the crash. Only this time, he wants to get beyond it, to find the buck he’d seen right before his rig rolled and his long crawl began. He plans to walk instead of drive and Buddy, as always, will be with him.
“He gets T-bone steaks for the rest of his life.”
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