The story of this elk hunt begins with a little background of who I am and what I do for a living. In my profession, I am a project manager for a large construction company. In January of this year myself, and my company were awarded a very large construction project near Chamberlain, SD with roughly a 2yr project schedule. The project we are involved with is a high profile gov’t project and receives a visit from SD Senator’s on a monthly basis as it is packed with roughly $45,000,000 dollars of ARRA funds so every Democrat and Republican has there eye on it as they want to prove to each other that it is or isn’t money well spent, providing jobs, etc etc.
The point of this historical overview is that the project comes with a stress level of 12 on a 10pt scale and commercial construction in my opinion is one of the most stressful industries to begin with. We are too slow and too expensive no matter how good you are.
At current, we are now in month 6 of construction and winter is fast approaching so myself and my construction team are a great big conglomoration of anxiety. One might ask in this situation, “How can you take time off to hunt, have fun or whatever if you are that busy and it is that important of a project?”, but for me it is critical to our sanity and I admit as well, hunting is THAT important!
So a few months ago, my other PM colleague on the job decided that he and our Superintendent needed a break from the job and were going to head to Alberta for an outfitted Elk hunt. I agreed that I would watch over the jobsite this week while they went hunting, and when they returned I would take a week off and head home for a week of MN Rut action.
So Saturday morning, my two friends left for Alberta for what we consider R&R. They arrived and low and behold, on Monday of this week just two days after they got there they both got shots at great bulls. My Superintendent found his Bull and later the PM made a long shot on his Bull. As they began tracking the 2nd bull they conversed and laughed about how good the “bet” was going to taste for the winner of the larger bull. By the way, this PM and Sup have worked together on the same projects for 12yrs and have become best friends. Somewhere about that point of the hunt, my Superintendent fell to the ground. The PM, and 2 hunting partners they were with immediately dropped everything and went to work on figuring out what was going on. (From this point on I can only explain what I have heard in a very abbreviated and heart breaking phone call, so I apologize if the event is not detailed or 100% accurate.)
Being on an elk hunt and tracking an animal, it is apparent these guys were not “on a road” and from what I understood they were roughly a half mile from it. Immediately it was apparent that my Sup was having a massive heart attack. From this point, I cannot fathom how bad it could have been but I know they carried him to the road and administered CPR for a 1/2 hour while they waited for an ambulance. To their benefit, one of the people there was a firefighter and EMT, so the experience was there. But even with that experience, my Superintendent would not live to make it to the hospital. Once there, it was determined that he had suffered a massive heart attack and even the best medical attention would not survive this. Monday night at 7:30 my colleague and friend lost his life. My other colleague and friend is a hero in my books, and has yet to leave Canada as he awaits autopsy and release of his best friend to the US to come home. He had to later walk back out to the site to retrieve guns, gear, etc and I cant imagine that walk back to the spot. I have had limited email communication but can only pray that he remains strong.
My stress out on site this week is gone now but my heart hurts more than ever. I wonder how important a simple building structure really can be anyways? Is it so important that we pour our health and well being into it? I know work needs to move along and life will speed ahead again, but I hope that my time spent outdoors in the future will only combat even more the lack of importance we all put into our jobs. Most of all, I hope when I meet God I do it the way my friend did, in a field full of wildlife.
May God bless you Gordy.
I hear ya. If you need to talk give me a shout. 
