Local hunter found safe

Judy Lundstrom will long remember Thanksgiving 2013, not for how it began but for how it ended.

Lundstrom accompanied her two sons as they left Wednesday morning for a deer and elk hunting trip near Harris Creek.

It was to be a family, pre-holiday hunt — on the eve of Thanksgiving. Lundstrom was going to stay in the truck while her sons, Jack and Jay Graham, and others hunted the mountains high above Libby. Others in the party included Jake Graham, Jay Graham’s son, and Bruce O’Brien. Graham family friend Jocelyn Eastham was going to stay near the truck and hunt with Lundstrom.

For Lundstrom, the next 24 hours were chaotic, not for all the cooking and meal preparation that laid ahead after she returned home, but for the sleeplessness and worrying she felt when her son, Jack Graham, failed to emerge from the wilderness at a predetermined rendezvous point Wednesday evening.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” Lundstrom said. “When he didn’t come out and then he didn’t answer (the gunshots), I figured he had a heart attack up there.”

As it turned out, Jack Graham was fine, mostly. He would live to hunt again, two days later.

After Jack Graham and his nephew, Jake Graham, split up about 10 a.m. Wednesday, to take separate game trails, what followed for Jack Graham was an exercise in perseverance in among the most hostile environs.

“The snow was about a foot deep, but it had this crust on top,” said Ken Rayome, the snowmobile and ATV representative with David Thompson Search & Rescue, who was summoned to area early Thanksgiving morning to find Graham. “It was cold, really tough.”

Rayome, Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Brandon Holzer, and rescue team members Andy Remp, Randy Remp, Dick Balcom and Ryan Demmendaal gathered the necessary equipment to answer the call at 2:25 a.m. Thanksgiving.

Admittedly, there was some reluctance to call for help, Jack Graham now says.

“I’ve lived here all my life,” he said. “I didn’t really want to be rescued. I knew if I could last the night, they’d find me in the morning.”

Meanwhile, a worried Lundstrom was unable to sleep, knowing her son was wandering in the wilderness.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Lundstrom said. “I was up at midnight making dressing and everything. There was no way I was going to be able to sleep.”

While Lundstrom was preparing both a ham and a turkey for a meal she hoped her family —both sons included — would enjoy, she worked around the warmth of the stove and oven knowing her son was lost in the cold.

Meanwhile, in the sub-freezing stillness of the night, Jack Graham bore the frigid wintry wrath that reminds hunters they are but a guest in the wilderness as they seek game.

He heard voices of what he thought were moose hunters. He saw a moose, but neither saw nor heard the hunters again, and by now the realization set in that he must sit and wait.

“I used the map I had as a fire starter,” Jack Graham said. “Even walking around up there was tough. I was cold and my legs were gone, like rubber. I knew I had to dry my clothes out, so I built a fire.”

Graham huddled around his fire, stoking the flames that had become his bridge through the night to the morrow’s light.

Cold, dehydrated and facing the increased risk of hypothermia, Jack Graham told a story that transitioned from seeking game to survival.

He melted snow for water, at one point he noticed the rising moon, coming up through the trees.

“I got up and looked,” Graham said. “I saw headlights!”

Graham got up and walked toward the light. In his less than clear-thinking state, which he now attributes to his beleaguered body and mind, he was mistaken.

“It was the moon coming up through the trees,” Graham said Monday, reflecting that his thinking then should have been more rational.

It was then that Graham knew he had to hunker down and wait for searchers to find him. By then, he estimates, he had walked 10 miles in the snow.

“I had answered every shot I heard,” Graham said. “They were shooting, and I could hear them, but they couldn’t hear mine. The trees were (stifling) up the noise.”

Time slowed. Nighttime crawled. Shortly before dawn on Thanksgiving he heard voices. Were they real?

Family and rescuers were closing on his location.

His fingertips numb from the cold, he felt a sense of warmth at seeing rescuers.

“I had one last bullet of 10, and I fired it,” Graham said.

Soon his family and rescuers were on him. That was 6:45 a.m.

Smothered by rescuers, Jack Graham sought a Red Bull and a Poweraide drink one rescuer brought. He gulped them down.

“He was in a bad way,” Rayome said. “He may not tell you that, but in another four hours it may have turned out a lot differently. His hands were so cold, I had to remove his gloves. This started bad, but it ended good.”

At home, Lundstrom was preparing a Thanksgiving meal — for both her sons — that none would soon forget.