We often receive praise for our products, but it’s rare that we receive a call that makes us all stop and think. Ironically it’s jumped the gun for one of our new products that’s in the pipeline. However with less said by us and over to the words of Johnny Kendrick:
On Saturday Oct 11,2014 my hunting partner and best friend of 15 years were hunting in the state of Wyoming north of Casper We were approximately 20 miles from town and had not seen anyone all day; at around 4:30 pm my best friend suffered a massive and fatal heart attack from where he was sitting behind the steering of the truck.
We called 911 and started CPR, the 911 operator could not locate us from my cell phone signal and all the rescue vehicles were going back and fourth on the road trying to find access to where we were, the 911 operator then said that they had dispatched an mountain rescue helicopter to find us.
When first saw the chopper, it was too far to the west and heading north away from our location; before I had the chance to inform the operator that the chopper had missed our location, he was out of sight and gone. I told the operator to get the chopper to turn around and fly back towards casper Mountain so that he would be coming back toward us; at that point I said that I had an orange smoke grenade that I could deploy when I could hear his rotor blades. When I heard the faint sound of the blades I pulled the pin and threw it to the ground and continued CPR; less that 30 seconds after deploying the grenade the life flight mountain rescue was hovering over us, the pilot sat the chopper down so close I thought the blades were going to hit the truck.
By the time the two medics were finally with us unfortunately my friend had already passed away. I am not suggesting that the smoke grenade was the only thing that helped the helicopter pin point our location but in my mind without it, finding us would have taken much longer. I will never again travel in the back country or go hunting in the mountains of Wyoming without at least two or three smoke grenades in my backpack.
We had no idea that morning when we headed out for a day of hunting what was going to happen; we always plan for snake bites, bear attacks even a broken bones, but a heart attack was the furthest thing we expected. I can’t imagine how long it would have been before we were found had I not had that smoke grenade.
Our condolences are with Mr Kendricks friends family and friends. We acknowledge that scenarios such as this are tricky to write about but Mr Kendrick has asked us to pass this on as anyone else who ventures out into the wilds. People should be prepared for the worst case scenario and locating people by helicopter in emergencies such as this requires every second and when all else fails a mountain rescue smoke grenade could be your final chance of being found.
