I love rallying around in UTVs, and I've seen my fair share of anesthesia and hospital beds because of it. But when I think of what I've gone through, it's like a papercut compared to what happened to a hunting guide in Utah, named Jake Schmitt. Thankfully, his German shorthaired pointer, Buddy, was there to save him—I'm not crying, you are.
While on a trip in the mountains right near RideApart executive editor Jonathon Klein's house earlier this month to scout for mule deer, Schmitt found himself going up a steep incline in his UTV with Buddy alongside him, but thought better of it. Unfortunately, going around would prove to be a huge misjudgment.
Schmitt started reversing to the bottom of the hill and thinks his tires might have hit a stump that he never saw, which sent his UTV rolling. Before the vehicle started to roll, Schmitt tried to get out, but before he could, the vehicle began its descent. The UTV crushed him on its first roll, which resulted in a broken left leg, dislocated right shoulder, broken ribs, broken ankles, and sprained wrists, along with plenty of cuts and bruises.
“I was beat up like a rag doll,” Schmitt says. “I stopped rolling, then assessed my legs while I could still hear the side-by-side rolling. And it was still running, so in my mind I’m thinking, ‘I don’t want to be the guy who dies out here and starts a wildfire.’”
Schmitt reckons the UTV rolled 15 to 20 times before coming to a halt. Although Schmitt lost all his gear during the crash, including his Garmin inReach, when he tried to stand up, he found Buddy next to him, who had somehow managed to escape from his soft-side, zippered crate in the UTV.
“No lights, no phone. Pistol, rifle, inReach, all gone. It was a yard sale,” Schmitt says. “Everything was gone but my dog.”
After finding a roll of duct tape and some pieces of the destroyed UTV, Schmitt formed a makeshift splint for his leg and began his 5-mile-long crawl back to his truck, but not without help. “When I passed out,” he says, “my dog would nudge me or sit on me to wake me up.”
By the time Schmitt made it back to his truck, 11 hours had passed. Thankfully, he's now on the road to recovery and plans to guide hunters this fall. Buddy is being rewarded accordingly with "T-bone steaks for the rest of his life.”
This story, along with the return of the GSX-R 1000, are my joint top feel-good stories of the year, thus far. Let us know if you agree.
