'Figured I was a goner': Man encounters black bear, insect swarms after breaking leg on trail
Randy Wood crawled, slept under branches and eventually passed out before being rescued
Randy Wood can still hear the bugs and his back remains riddled with swollen bite marks.
They are psychological and physical tokens — along with a shattered leg — from what was supposed to be a short ride on a dirt bike through some trails on June 4.
Instead, the intended 30-minute ride turned into a 25-hour ordeal punctuated by thousands of insects, a black bear and a firm belief he would not get out of the back-country bush alive.
"I just was so scared. I figured I was a goner," said Wood, 62, recalling the experience that started around 2 p.m. between the Camp Hughes Cemetery and Carberry in southwest Manitoba.
WATCH | Manitoba man rescued after stranded with broken leg in bush:
After stopping to check out a turtle on the path and thinking about how his grandkids would like to see it, Wood went for his cellphone to take a pic. That's when he realized his wallet and phone were at home.
Wood was working earlier in the day and changed pants so he wouldn't bring sawdust into the house. It was an unfortunate oversight.
Not long after the turtle encounter, the rear wheel of his bike caught loose sand and crashed on its side, with Wood's leg pinned.
"I'm surprised I never passed out pulling the leg out. It was just terrible, oh my God," he said about the searing pain.
"I could see it was broken bad. I didn't know what was all broken but I knew I had to splint it, because the pain was just extreme."
He placed sticks on each side of the leg and tore his shirt into strips to wrapped around it.
Unable to stand up or operate the bike, Wood crawled. He estimates he was about six kilometres from home.
"The sand flies were atrocious. They were just chewing me to pieces because I didn't have a shirt on," he said.
At one point, Wood looked up to see a black bear eyeballing him from about nine metres away.
"It wasn't one of these little ones that are hopping around. It was a big bear," he said. "So I tried to make myself big. I got up as far as I could, like on my knees, straight up. I yelled and told him to get out of here."
With a snort the bear turned and ambled off. But Wood wasn't convinced it was gone.
"I seen another spot up the trail where there's a bunch of tree branches and tree logs. I figured I'd get my back to them tree logs so the bear couldn't get me from behind if he did decide to come," he said.
He gripped a stick in one hand and waited. Then the mosquitoes set in.
"They were unforgiving. They were chewing me up bad," Wood said.
They quickly trumped his bear worries. All he could think about was covering up.
"I ripped a bunch of shrubbery that was around the trail and made a pile and I put some to lay on and then I covered myself up with the shrubbery so the mosquitoes couldn't get me," he said.
"It was fairly thick on me and I left one arm out with a piece of a branch to shoot them away from my face."
He stayed that way through the night but whenever he shifted, his exposed back would be attacked. When the sun came up, he resumed crawling along the trail, his pants shredded and his knees bleeding and raw.
The heat of the day soon exhausted Wood, who crawled into shade, staying near the trail in case someone came along.
The temperature pushed 30 C in the early afternoon and his tongue dried out. Wood stripped fresh bark from branches of shrubs and chewed it to moisten his mouth before spitting it out.
"I had to do that every half hour or so," he said.
As sand flies renewed their assault, Wood passed out. The sound of an approaching motor roused him.
"I look and I seen the most beautiful sight," he said, describing a white RCMP quad with an officer aboard.
"She saved me," Wood said, his voice trembling and breaking. "It was another two miles I would have had to crawl to get out of there. I don't think I'd have made it."
It was 3 p.m. and 31 C outside.
The officer offered to come back with a vehicle better suited to let Wood stretch his leg, but he refused. He didn't want to let her leave. The pair were met by an ambulance near the cemetery and Wood was taken to Brandon hospital.
Aside from the fly and mosquito bites, Wood was full of ticks, said his wife, Leslee Verstraete.
"They were picking hundreds off him."
She was recovering from carpal tunnel surgery and heavily medicated on Tylenol when she dozed off the day he ventured out. She woke up around 10 p.m. and realized he wasn't home.
"She thought it was very peculiar that I didn't come back for supper, and I never do that," Wood said, adding she also considered he might have gone to Winnipeg to see his son.
Verstraete woke up again at 3:30 a.m. and knew something was wrong. She called his cell several times and had to wait about five hours for the RCMP office to open.
When she found his pants, Verstraete knew Wood was somewhere nearby on the trails. Had he gone to Winnipeg, he would have taken his licence and phone.
But where? There's at least 30 miles of trails in the forested area, Wood said.
"I was so upset because I had left him there overnight. I just wasn't thinking properly from having my surgery. And so I called the police and of course I was breaking down," Verstraete said.
By 9:30 a.m. RCMP were scouring the trails. Verstraete also posted Wood's disappearance on Facebook and the responses helped pinpoint where he likely went in.
The couple is now recovering together and laying down new ground rules.
"I told him, you're never leaving without telling me where you go again," Verstraete said.
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With files from Meaghan Ketcheson