Im glad your safe Randy!!
Farming, construction, industry, hunting-deer and pheasant and duck and prairie dog, fishing- open water and ice, while driving or as a passenger.
I don’t gamble. Never bought a lottery ticket. Don’t feel lucky at all in general really… but I never gamble. Why, because I should be dead 10x over, blind, without hands, missing digits, without feet, no limbs, no hearing, I’m missing a few; but… im none of those and happy to be alive. All things functional! Honestly I question why I skirted each and every one of them, often. Don’t want to share any today really. When reflecting upon as many that come to mind it feels like a jinx to reveal them all or pick a worst, as so many were simply skirting dead.
I really don’t enjoy looking back at those moments. Shoot it makes me feel luckier than a gosh darn lottery winner. But they pop into your mind, like now.
So I’ll share some timely advice for those spending time in ice shelters this winter. Sunflower heaters are great. I’ll probably never use a different style of heat whether in my one man, or sleeping in a hub house. Buddy heaters will shut off before toxic co levels will kill you. A sunflower will not. Sunflowers put out a lot of heat. Enough generally that you can have a window open to allow fresh air in. Lots of it.
Having a window open was my strategy, and it nearly killed me one night when the wind was silent. I ran two heaters that night. Always had two as a precaution on the ice, but I didn’t plan on running both. Might’ve saved my life actually. I unpackaged a new clam 6×12. Setup. Realized it was not insulated as advertised. I had several cocktails while dealing with customer service, and catching walleyes late into the night on mille lacs. I had several photo fish and I can still look back and see how poisoned I was becoming from co as the night went on. Went to sleep. My buddy heater shut off at~1am. I couldn’t get it started, cursed the thing and blessed my sunflower. In hindsight, I may have gone outside to urine, check propane, e.t.c, i don’t recall. But if I did, I got a small dose of fresh air.
Back to sleep. 4am my sunflower shuts off, I wake up. I couldn’t get a lighter to work. Had 3 in my coat, none of them worked. Puzzled, tired, now with zero heater’s, I stepped outside to get another lighter from my car.
Before I went back into the house, it hit me!
The house might not have enough oxygen to sustain a flame!
I light the lighter in my hand. It works instantly.
I pass the lit lighter through the hub house door a few inches…poof out goes the flame. I repeated this several times in Awww.
Not enough oxygen for a bic lighter. From the floor to head high.
So, I start fanning air into the house enough to freshen it up. Relight the sunflower. Saturday morning, thinking about a morning bite, but moreso thinking about how lucky I was to be alive. I sucked in fresh air for an hour. Decided It might be best to pack up and go home.
I had slept many night on ice prior to that. Prior ran a co detector, even ran trials at home to test the detector. I had become “smart enough and experienced enough to not need bring it anymore… and it was the dead calm night that incredibly, I survived.
Sunflower, keep fresh air moving in fellas.
