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A Riverside man crawled with a broken leg for almost four days after falling while hunting in the remote wilderness of Idaho.
John Sain, 50, a general contractor and experienced hunter, set out on a solo trip last Wednesday to hunt elk in the expansive Salmon-Challis National Forest in Boise, Idaho, reports KTVB-TV. While tracking an elk deep into the woods and miles off the trail, Sain stepped up on two logs when his foot slipped between them, severely breaking his right leg. "My momentum went forward and it snapped the two bottom bones in my right leg, the tib and the fib, in half," he explains to KTVB-TV.
Unable to walk and stranded with no cell service and little food and water for several days, Sain came close to giving up entirely and taking his own life. "[I] contemplated on just ending it right there honestly," he told KTVB-TV. "There was no way I was going to make it." He even began writing out goodbye letters to his wife, Jennifer Sain, and their two children. But that's when he became determined to make his way out of the woods. "There's no way I'm doing this. I will get out of here," Sain told ABC 7.
Using two tree branches and a torn piece of clothing, Sain fashioned a splint for his broken leg and began crawling his way out. "For two and a half days I drug myself out of there," Sain told KTVB-TV. He built a fire each night as temperatures hovered around 20 degrees after dark.
Then, on the afternoon of his fourth day alone, Sain finally encountered two lost motorcyclists on the trail. One of them rode back towards cell service and called for help.
Local fire and rescue teams, with the help of volunteers, had to clear trees with chainsaws so that a helicopter could land to retrieve Sain. He was then airlifted to Saint Alphonsus hospital in Boise, where he is currently recovering from surgery on his leg.
And, yes, Sain says he will go hunting alone again, only next time he'll bring a satellite phone or GPS locator.
