
Back when I started hunting in the 1960s, there were no ATVS or UTVS and hardly any four-wheel drive trucks. Standard two-wheel drive vehicles were the norm, and we were always getting stuck in the mud.
I used the family car to hunt before moving up to a 1959 Ford truck that I had fixed up when I was sixteen. It didn’t take long for it to fall victim to the sticky Winn Parish mud.
My friend Milton Green and I hauled a pirogue his father had made to Dugdemona Swamp before daylight to hunt squealers (aka wood ducks) in a flooded flat known as the Mayhaw Pond.
To get to the Mayhaw Pond, we had to go down a hill on an old logging road and through a big mud hole at the bottom. I immediately spun down in the mud and got stuck.
After making a little headway by rocking the truck back and forth, I put it in reverse and hit the gas. The truck suddenly jerked free and side-swiped a tree, crunching in the passenger side door.
An hour later, Milton fell out of the pirogue into the freezing water.
The damaged door would never open all the way again, but I didn’t have the money to fix it and continued driving the truck until it died for good a few years later.
After graduating from Dodson High School in 1970, I bought a new Ford Fairlane with a fiery orange body and black vinyl roof. I hunted out of it for five years and kept a sheet of plastic in the trunk on which to lay my deer.
One late evening after killing a nice 9-point buck, I got my cousin Gary Copeland to help drag it out of the woods. Trying to get as close to the deer as possible, I drove down a soggy pipeline and got stuck in a mud hole just a couple of hundred yards from the one that claimed my truck a year or so earlier.
Unable to get it out, Gary and I sat on the trunk and waited for help. When we failed to return, my brother Danny realized what had happened and came to the rescue—in his 1968 Dodge Charger. Everybody kept a chain in the car for just such emergencies and we were soon on our way.
I was in my thirties before I finally could afford to buy a new Mazda four-wheel drive truck with a winch. It wasn’t long before I buried it in the worst incident I’ve ever experienced.
I drove to the edge of a palmetto swamp and parked in my normal spot. Getting back to the truck after dark, I eased out and quickly spun down. Engaging the four-wheel drive, I tried again but only buried it deeper. No problem, I thought, I’ll just winch myself out. I hooked up to a tree but the ground was so water-logged that my tires just dug a trench instead of getting on top of the ground. Before long, I was almost to the tree and had to stop before I got completely trapped. Then it started raining.
I walked about a mile to my uncle’s house and he gave me a ride to my parents’ place. Their neighbor, Bobby Joe Chandler, had a jeep, and he and one of his boys agreed to help, but even the jeep couldn’t break my Mazda free.
The next morning my cousin Jimmy Jones brought his log skidder and by jerking the truck so hard it looked like the frame would break, he finally pulled it out. I never parked on questionable ground again.
I’d like to say I got wiser in my old age and getting stuck is a thing of the past, but that’s not the case. In fact, I got stuck on a road trip just last year.
Carol and I were in my Tacoma driving down Highway 50, the “loneliest highway in America,” passing through Nevada’s seemingly endless desert.
One famous spot on the road is Sand Mountain, a 600-foot-tall sand dune that is popular with the dune buggy enthusiasts. We decided to drive out to get a closer look.
The sand started getting deeper and deeper, and Carol warned, “You need to stop!”—over and over.
“We’re good,” I said. “If we start spinning, I’ll just engage the four-wheel drive.”
I had no sooner said that than the back tires started spinning down. “I told you not to go any farther,” Carol said. I ignored her, smugly engaged the four-wheel drive and promptly spun down even farther.
I tried rocking it, but we didn’t move. “I told you not to go any farther,” Carol repeated (I hate it when she’s right).
We had noticed some campers about a mile away with some dune buggies and I was considering going to them for help. Then I noticed that the four-wheel drive indicator was flashing, which meant the front wheels weren’t engaged. I killed the engine, and the wheels engaged when I restarted, and we reversed out of the sand without any problems.
“See, I said, “I knew what I was doing.”
Dr. Terry L. Jones is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. An autographed copy of “Louisiana Pastimes,” a collection of the author’s stories, costs $25. Contact him at tljones505@gmail.com