A hunter who disappeared during a trip through a national forest in California was found alive after an arduous 20-day journey through high-altitude terrain where he prayed for a miracle once his legs started to give out.
Ron Dailey, 65, was reported missing on Oct. 13 when he didn’t return from a deer hunting trip near Shaver Lake, located in the heart of the Sierra National Forest.
Weeks of silence ensued as complete strangers, including the Fresno County Search and Rescue Posse, organized searches to try and locate Dailey.
Dailey’s wife, Glenda, said their family never stopped praying for his safe return as she reposted his missing person flyer on Facebook every single day since he vanished.
Their pleas were finally answered on Nov. 1, a whopping 20 days since anyone had last heard from Dailey. The Fresno County Sheriff’s Office announced that he was found safe, albeit malnourished and battered, on the park’s Swamp Lake trail, roughly 20 miles away from his original hunting site.
Glenda wrote that Dailey was hospitalized and being pumped “with fluids” to bring “his color” back, but promised that he would be ready to share his story once he was rested.
Dailey said that he originally drove up the Swamp Lake trail in his truck, a 2002 Silver Dodge Dakota, and safely reached the top, where he paused to snack on several strips of jerky and a few nuts, according to a recording obtained by ABC News.
From there, he drove down a “jeep road” when his truck hit a snag. He tried to turn around, but couldn’t, so he continued further down the trail, he said in the recording.
“I don’t know why, but I did,” Dailey admitted.
He eventually reached a “rocky plateau” and camped out there for several days. He followed the trail signs, but the terrain still tore up his truck, so he picked it apart and removed the passenger seat entirely so that he still had a place to rest, even though he said it was “very uncomfortable.”
Realizing his truck couldn’t be salvaged, Dailey eventually abandoned it and trekked back down the trail on foot.
But the trail was grueling. The altitude was just over 10,000 feet, which he said forced him to stop every hundred yards to catch his breath.
Still, he pressed on.
“This is it, Ron, you either try to get out or you sit here and die,” Dailey recounted telling himself, according to the recording.
Somewhere along the way, Dailey lost his cellphone. As he grew more weary, he also started to stumble more frequently, but would still stop and pray.
“You gotta send somebody up here to me. I can hardly walk anymore,” Dailey said, choking back tears in the recording.
Not long after, Dailey said he spotted a pair of headlights shining through the woods and he scrambled to flag down the driver.
He all but collapsed into his rescuers’ arms and “started hugging them and praying,” according to the recording. The hunters who found him quickly forked over their food and water as Dailey confessed he hadn’t eaten in six days.
Glenda noted that she specifically plans to meet the men responsible for Dailey’s safe return, but was quick to laud all the others who worked tirelessly to find Dailey with equal praise.
“There are so many family members, friends and people we do not even know that were looking and we are so thankful to all of you! God still does miracles, and we have just been shown one,” Glenda wrote.
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