Duck hunters hear cry for help, then see boaters floating in river, Florida rescuers say
Under the cover of darkness, two commercial boat captains launched their boats in a Florida river to pick up clients for a day of duck hunting.
Brice Williamson and Clay Sorrell, hunting and fishing guides and captains with Williamson Outfitters in Eastpoint, were on the water by 6 a.m. on Jan. 20 and headed toward a boat ramp to pick up the duck hunting group, the company said in a Jan. 20 Facebook post and Jan. 21 video.
The waters were rough on the Apalachicola River, they told WCTV, and the temperature was near freezing, about 38 degrees Fahrenheit.
Suddenly, they heard someone calling out for help.
“Please help my two friends, they just flipped their boat over in the river channel,” the captains said he yelled.
Jumping into action, the two boats rushed in the direction of the capsized boat.
“It’s a scary thing, something that a duck hunter always talks about. What if this happens?” Cole Puckhaber, also on the boat, said in the video. “Fortunately, we were the last boats to put in, and if we weren’t the last boats to put in, I don’t know what would have happened to those guys if we wouldn’t have been there. It was definitely scary.”
When they arrived, they saw a man using his life jacket and floating in the freezing water.
The first boat, led by Sorrell, quickly reached the man in the lifejacket and pulled him into the boat, Williamson said in the video.
In the other boat, Wiliamson began searching for the other boater, invisible against the dark water.
Then they spotted him tucked between the pylons of a nearby bridge.
“He had grabbed onto a decoy bag, still had his waders on,” Sorrell said. “Luckily, he was smart enough to grab the decoy bag and stay calm and pin himself between two pylons.”
With both men safely onboard, the boats headed back to the ramp and rushed to get the men warm.
They dropped their wet clothing and sat in a heated truck, uninjured but in shock, the company said.
“The way the whole thing was executed, you know you run stuff like that through your head all the time, like what if this were to happen with one of my buddies riding on the boat with me or my client that’s riding on the boat with me, or my dad or anybody,” Puckhaber said. “And how well it went this morning? I mean I would say it’s a 100% success.”
The crews said they were able to anchor and recover the guns and gear from the capsized vessel, then tow the boat back to the boat ramp to be recovered.
“Nobody else was at the ramp to help them besides us, but I’m very thankful that we were there and God had his timing and that timed up pretty good,” Williamson told WCTV.
The Apalachicola River meets the Gulf of Mexico at Apalachicola Bay, about 75 miles southwest of Tallahassee.
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