Lost hunter spends Friday night outside

Washington County Search and Rescue volunteers and sheriff’s deputies located a lost elk hunter who spent Friday night outdoors on Cuddy Mountain.
 The sheriff’s office 911 dispatch received a call at 8 p.m. on Friday that a hunter was due at 2 p.m. and never arrived. A deputy made contact with the reporting party to collect more details about the location of the hunter.
 The search and rescue team was dispatched at 9:30 p.m. and nine members arrived on scene and set up a staging area. The hunter was reported missing in the Seid Creek area above the Crackerjack Trail on Cuddy Mountain, search and rescue director Tony Buthman said.
 Due to the lack of daylight, the decision was made to patrol roads to see if the hunter had walked out of the woods.
 At 1 a.m. the search and rescue team members decided to get some sleep and begin the search at  first light.
 Another three deputies and three more members of the search and rescue squad joined the effort on Saturday morning.
 The terrain in the area where the hunter was believed to be located was steep with lots of brush and fallen timber.
 The team deployed a UAV to do aerial search and also to advise searchers of terrain features.
 At about 9:30 a.m. the ground team made verbal contact with the subject and located him at 9:59 a.m., Buthman said.
 The hunter, who was from Nampa, was found at about 6,500 feet and about 1.5 miles from the nearest Forest Service road. He had spent a windy and cold night outdoors in temperatures that dropped to the low 20s. There were a few inches of snow in some shaded areas, Buthman said.
 The hunter did not suffer any ill health effects from a night outdoors other than he was thirsty. He had a heavy parka, gloves and handwarmers but no water or cellphone. He told rescuers that he dug a foxhole to get out of the wind and to try to stay warm, Buthman said.
 He had been hunting with his father and the two had become separated. He thought he heard animals in the brush and went in that direction.
 “Pretty soon he didn’t realize where he was,” Buthman said.