Turkey season was in full swing up here in Northeastern Oklahoma and I had a tag left to fill. It had been raining hard for a week and time was running out, so on the first nice morning I packed up the truck for what was to be a fairly short, half-day hunt. I'd heard some good feedback about some turkey bedding locations and was eager to jump em. Planning on a quick 3 hour hunt, I packed light so I could get in and out quickly. Loaded my turkey vest with a few diaphram calls, a squealing hen call, a knife, a granola bar, a water bottle and a pocket full of shotgun shells. I brought a blind and some camo burlap in the truck just in case, but I was planning on making it a stalking morning. For some odd and stupid reason, I ignored my typical routine of packing a case of water, a shovel, and firestarting materials...I wasn't planning a full-day hike, just a quick jaunt into the woods.

The first spot I hit looked promising. I could hear 3 different toms thundering about 300 yards away and I started to put the stalk on them. About 20 minutes into it I realized that they were on the other side of a deep swamp from me. The area I was hunting was thick with brush and you couldn't even see the swamp until you were almost in the middle of it. Thank God for my new Rocky hunting boots - I stayed dry in 9" of water and mud. Realizing that getting around this swamp was going to take another hour, I decided to try a different spot - I was shooting for a quick hunt, remember?

About 3 miles away I pulled into what I hoped was going to be the final resting ground of a big, old thunder-throater. As my truck crested the top of a hill I had a clean view of a valley and river bottoms below me - about 4 miles worth of view...gorgeous! Prime turkey country. I looked at the road as it decended the hill and it looked completely passable, which was a welcome sight since many of the roads in the area had been washed out from the recent torrential rains. As I took off down the hill it only took me 20 seconds to realize it was a mistake. About 200 yards down the hill the backend of my truck started fishtailing - a tell-tail sign I was hitting sticky, Oklahoma mud. The strange thing was, the road still looked completely dry. As my F350's backend swung out from behind me, I instantly (over)compensated, putting my truck into a 3mph spin that there was no recovering from. As luck would (not) have it, the spin ended with the front end of my diesel truck in a water and mud filled ditch while my back end was still on the road. Now, anyone who drives a big block diesel knows how heavy the motor is, and that was not helping me in this situation. I tried in vain for about 15 minutes to rock the truck out of the mud, but didn't make the least bit of progress. It was stuck and stuck good. I wasn't moving.

I took off hiking in an attempt to find some deadfall in the area, hoping to pack enough wood under the tires that they might find something to grab on to. After an hour of dragging deadfall back and attempting to build a platform to get out, I still had made no progress. Luckily I had great cell reception (thanks Verizon!) and even 3G service, despite being 3 miles from any gravel road and about 7 miles from the nearest patch of pavement. I called my wife to update her (rather sheepishly....I should have NEVER gone down that road) and then began to search the internet on my phone for a tow service that might have the guts too attempt to pull me out. AAA laughed at me for even suggesting they leave the highway. I found one wrecker service 80 miles away who would be willing to TRY, but it was going to cost me upwards of $300. I obviously had to get the truck out, but was not prepared to let that be anything but my last option. So, without any other prospects, I started hiking out, hoping that I passed a farm or something on the way out to my mudhole. No such luck - all oil pumpjacks for miles and miles.

About 4 miles down the road, I found a guy working on the pump jacks and asked him if he knew anyone in the area that might have something to pull a diesel truck out. The next 3 hours were spent calling someone, who knew someone, who was related to someone, who had a cousin, who might have a backhoe that he could use.....you get the idea. I finally made contact with a local excavating service who was willing to bring a backhoe out for $100...the catch was, they were at a work site and wouldn't be back in the area until 5pm that night. The time was currently 12:30pm. I figured I'd wait it out and began the 4 mile hike back to my truck.

On the walk back, I realized why the road had looked so dry. The mud was masked by a layer of sand that had blown over it during the heavy winds the night before. I looked like dry hardpack, but even the weight of my boot broke thru the sand and sank 4" down. I never had a prayer. I arrived back and the truck, hydrated with what was left of my water bottle and figured that if I had 4 hours to burn, I might as well keep trying to get out. I pulled more and more dead logs and branches over to the truck and kept compacting them down in the mud. Each time, the spinning tires and weight of the truck would shove them down further. I felt like I was making no progress, but I kept going. At one point the tires on my truck were so caked with mud that I was sure even if the logs gave me traction, the tires wouldn't. So, I began the 45 minute project of scraping out each and every tread of every tire until they were all clean. Then...more deadfall. It was rounding 2pm, and I was getting more and more tired, but I kept reminding myself that if all else fails, I had a backhoe by 5pm. I dragged one last load of deadfall to the truck and jammed it as far under the tires as I could. I figured, if this load didn't do it, nothing would, and I would just sit and wait. As I climbed into the truck I said a quick prayer and shifted into gear. The tires did nothing but spin. So I rocked the truck, yet again, back and forth...nothing. With one last final effort, I shifted into forward again and gunned it (something you never do when you're stuck in the mud, but I figured, it was my last try). The tires spun, and spun, and spun, and then.....GRABBED. I felt the truck lift up, and immediately realized that the back tires would soon fall into that same ditch, so I gunned it even more. As my front end pulled the back out of the ditch, I rocketed into the field in front of me, praying there wasn't another big bog, or a fallen tree or a giant rock right in front of me. At 15 mph (which feels like 70 when youre adrenaline is going and your truck is flying blindly through the Oklahoma back country) I spun the truck around in the field and aimed for what I hoped was a dry section of road about 150 yards away. As my tires grabbed the road, I gassed it even more, wanting desperately to get only something I knew was solid. I crested the same hill I'd glassed from before and saw a giant granite surface on the side. I pulled onto the granite and put the truck in park - time to examine the damage.

After a thorough walk-around with no damage in sight, some grateful prayers, and a minute or two of heavy breathing, I pulled out my binoc's again and glassed back to where I had been stuck. My tires had dug about a 28" bog into the ground, and the weight of my engine forced the mud down another foot. It was a sheer miracle that I was able to actually pull out of the hole, 4x4 and deadfall or not. I called the excavater and cancelled and then high-tailed it back to the highway. I might not have filled my turkey tag, but saving my truck and the cost of towing gave me a bigger sense of accompishment than whacking any bird could. I'll go back to that area to hunt, and hopefully next year pull out a big tom, but I'll be hiking in from now on, and that truck will have all 4 wheels on the hardpack.