Hunter found
Joe Black spotted from a helicopter two days after going missing while hunting
John McFadden
Northern News Services
Friday, February 24, 2017
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Family and friends of a hunter from Behchoko are breathing a sigh of relief.
Joe Black recovers in Stanton Territorial Hospital yesterday afternoon. Black went missing Monday on the barren lands about 150 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife. He was spotted from a helicopter Wednesday and rushed to hospital aboard a Canadian military plane. Shown with him is his son Daniel Black and wife Margaret Black. - John McFadden/NNSL photo |
Joe Black, who was reported missing on the barren lands north of Yellowknife, was found alive on Wednesday, two days after he was reported missing.
Joe Black, 65, was located about 40 kilometres east of Murdock Lake, near the Gahcho Kue Diamond Mine ice road, about 150 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife. That is according to Lt. Karyn Mazurek, spokesperson for Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Trenton in eastern Ontario. Black was flown to the Yellowknife Airport aboard a Canadian Air Force C-130 Hercules plane that had been dispatched from CFB Trenton on Tuesday, one day after Black was reported missing.
Mazurek said Black was spotted from the air Wednesday by searchers on board a helicopter owned by Yellowkife-based Acasta Heliflight, which had been contracted by RCMP to assist in the search. Mazurek said Black was flown by helicopter to the diamond mine before he was loaded onto the Hercules for the flight to Yellowknife. The Hercules used the airplane landing strip at the mine.
When it landed at the airport later in the day on Wednesday, it was met by an ambulance right out on the runway. Military search and rescue technicians and paramedics then loaded Black into the ambulance which rushed him to Stanton Territorial Hospital where he remains, recovering from his ordeal. It is believed Black was suffering from hypothermia when he was found.
RCMP stated in a news release they had been contacted Monday afternoon when Black was separated from his hunting party and had not been seen for several hours. He was on a snowmobile at the time. Several organizations then became involved in the search including RCMP, the Civil Air Search and Rescue Association, the military, Acasta Heliflight, an Air Tindi Cessna, private searchers from Behchoko, as well as operators and safety officers of the ice road. RCMP added blowing snow and high winds made the search challenging.
Dave Taylor, the Yellowknife zone commander for the search and rescue association, who was personally involved in the search, said trying to find someone missing on the barren lands is literally like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
"It's a vast area and we can only search a little bit of it at a time," he said. "It takes a long time to cover an area on a snow machine."
He said 13 of his people put in 134 volunteer hours for the search operation. Taylor said hunters heading out to the land can carry a few simple things with them that would help in case they do get lost, such as walkie-talkies, a SPOT device, flares, or a GPS.
"I've been involved in a number of searches and those sorts of things make the search go faster," he said.
Black was not up to talking about his ordeal when Yellowknifer visited him in his hospital room yesterday. But through his son Chris Black, Joe Black wanted to express his gratitude and say thanks to all the people involved in the search and the health-care professionals who have been helping him since he arrived in the hospital. Several family members were crowded into Black's hospital room obviously very happy and relieved he had been found alive.
Black was the second hunter from Behchoko to go missing in the same general area in less than a month. The body of Antoine Betsidea, 46, was found near MacKay Lake on Feb. 1 after he was separated from his hunting party.
Monfwi MLA Jackson Lafferty told Yellowknifer he knows the Black family well and very thankful the hunter was found alive. He praised Black's hunting and on-the-land skills and said he has experience with the Canadian Rangers program.
"Thank God that he survived this ordeal," stated Lafferty in an e-mail.
