Chris Landers of Alberta, Canada is privileged to hunt some of the most beautiful country on Earth each year for elk, bear, and deer. He started bowhunting three years ago with the encouragement from a friend. Since then, a passion for the hunt has continued to burn with each passing season.
Landers has learned a lot in his short time as a hunter, thanks to the wisdom and guidance from friends. However, nothing prepared him for what would take place in early September while on the mountain in search of elk.
“We woke up at 4am on Day 2 of our elk hunt and started making our way up the river,” says Landers. “We let out a few bugles and had bulls bugling back further up the valley. We closed in on the elk and got to within 35 yards of the bull but couldn’t get a shot. We took a break mid-day to eat and rest up before heading back down into the river bottom.”
Landers and his friends were planning to ease back down to the river valley and see if they could locate another bull for the afternoon. They made their way across a south facing slope before stopping to discuss the game plan further.
“Once we started walking again, I felt what I thought was a branch hit me in the leg,” says Landers. “I stumbled forward trying to get off of it, then tripped and fell. I rolled over on my back and saw an arrow missing from my quiver and knew I was in trouble. I looked down and saw a rip in my pants and blood was just gushing out of my leg.”
One of the arrows in Lander’s quiver had been snagged by brush and flipped out, landing nock down with the broadhead angling up towards Chris. The broadhead entered Chri’s shin, angled up his leg into the top of his knee and lodged in the bottom of his thigh.
Lander’s buddies thought he was messing around when he first told them he had taken an arrow to the leg. But as soon as he showed them the wound and the blood, the whole crew knew things were bad.
One of the friends immediately pulled his belt off to make a torniquet. The other friend quickly began to contact emergency services. “We hadn’t had a lick of cell service the whole time we were out there,” says Landers. “But believe it or not, when my friend tried to call 911, he was able to get a call out while we were sitting there on that south facing slope.”
Because of the location, it took nearly an hour and a half for emergency crews to arrive on the scene and clear out a landing zone for the air-evac crew to land a chopper. Once crews arrived they immediately began to address the bleeding, apply a fresh tourniquet, and provide Chris with meds.
Chris was flown to the hospital for treatment and extraction of the broadhead and remaining piece of the arrow. The broadhead did extensive damage to arteries and nerves in the leg, resulting in a number of surgeries. In fact, Landers has undergone 8 surgeries in the last month following the accident. He remains in the hospital as doctors continue to monitor the healing process of his leg.
Despite spending the last month in the hospital, Chris is expected to make a complete recovery. He encourages all hunters to make sure they have a fresh first aid kit with them at all times while hunting, particularly one that has a quality tourniquet and plenty of gauze to apply to a wound.
“My buddies saved my life out there by applying a tourniquet to my leg,” says Landers. “Otherwise, I would have bled to death right there on the mountain.”
Unfortunately, this type of accident happens more often than most people think. A similar instance took place recently in Colorado when a bowhunter was impaled above the knee by an arrow that had been left in the woods by another hunter. The injured hunter didn’t have cell phone service but was able to use an emergency satellite beacon to contact emergency crews and share his location.
“No one knows how long the lost arrow had been there, but it’s the second year in a row that a bowhunter in this area has been injured by a lost arrow,” says Harry Sandler, Vice President of the Routt County Search and Rescue.
Both incidents taking place in Colorado resulted in the hunters being impaled above the knee by arrows left behind by other hunters. These stories serve as reminder for the need to look a little harder for arrows that missed their mark while hunting.
These items could save your life. Don’t head into the backcountry without them.
- First-Aid Kit
- Tourniquet
- Garmin inReach
- Fire Starter
- Emergency Kit / Survival Kit
