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“Half hour more daylight and I would have been
fine,” Bill told the rescuers when he emerged
from the woods.“you can see the nose on a guy’s
face on the ground from more
than 120 metres up.”
At 9 a.m., it was time. As
Devaney worked the joysticks,
Holben called out adjustments.
Threading the drone between
trees, they sent it flying toward
the search area.
At the same time, one of the
tracking teams came upon a
spot where some branches
had been tamped down into a
sort of mattress. They’d heard
the lost hunter was an old
woodsman. Such a comfort-
able nest had to be the work of
a master’s hand.that morning, McDonnell
had woken before dawn,
replaying his wrong turns and
imagining his wife’s despair.
He never worried once that he
wouldn’t find his way back,
only about what would be
waiting for him when he got there.
Just after 7 a.m., the sky lightened
and the thicket around him began to
reappear. He ate a few snacks and got
ready to battle with the laurel.
The light was still bad, and each
step took some thought to avoid
thorns or a twisted ankle. After about
15 minutes, McDonnell came to a spot
where he could see the landscape
around him more clearly. There, only
a few hundred metres away, was theline of trees he had been hoping to
reach the night before.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” he
yelled to the woods.
Within 15 more minutes, McDon-
nell emerged from the thicket and
began a slow ascent to the ridgeline.
He knew the trackers couldn’t be too
far away. He began pushing himself
harder. He’d better make it to the Jeep
before they made it to him—he didn’t
like being fussed over.rd.ca 57