Yep, then left with just bows. Left packs in the vehicle. I'm curious what the pin between the car and camp was for.
I'm also concerned about foul play now. It has almost been a week. I figure they would've found something by now. That's a long time to be out there with just your bow.
So many variables just don’t add up. I rifle hunted the San Juan Range in 2023—fully guided, horseback in, deep into country that felt like the edge of the world.
First morning, just after I’d downed a bull, a hunter claiming to be a heart surgeon from Denver wandered into the meadow where we were quartering the carcass. He just appeared, as if conjured from the mist. The whole thing felt off. I sat on the kill while my guide worked, watching this stranger circle. He returned again the next morning, claiming that he’d hiked back in before dawn. Truth be told, it felt like he was waiting for a chance to swipe our game bags. The guides finally managed to send him packing, but the air stayed uneasy.
I wrote a book about what it takes to cross this terrain—the physical grind, the mental strain. Out there, you’re stripped down to who you really are.
These boys, the ones lost, seemed to have the wits to lean on technology for their safety net. Maybe chasing a bull led them to ditch supplies or cut corners. Out there, that’s a deadly game. Dehydration, altitude sickness, biting cold—they creep up when you’re not paying attention.
Our guides drilled one rule into us: Stay put.
They’d leave us alone just long enough for us to soak it all in, then circle back with lunch. They knew most folks ignored good advice. If we did get bold and wandered off, and found ourselves lost, they told us to find water—any creek or stream—and follow it downstream. Water always leads somewhere: a river, a road, a trail, another camp.
The car being moved an hour after it was spotted at the trailhead. That detail could swing either way. Out there, you don’t let on if you’ve seen anything. We played a kind of chess, doling out false leads about where we’d spotted elk, hoping to nudge other hunters away from our ground. Sometimes it worked—sometimes it just stirred the pot.
Lightning, a slip on a muddy slope, a rock loosed just wrong—those are the accidents I think of, the kind that can take two men out quick. But there’s another darkness that haunts these woods: shady strangers, bad intentions, a meeting gone wrong.
I hope those boys are found, safe and alive. Out there, you learn to expect the unexpected—but you never stop hoping for a good ending.
??? Those boys are lost at best...something happend and I don't think it's a 5 day pack out with a Bull.
