Jake Schmitt, a hunting guide from Utah, set out into the Uintah Mountains on July 20 to scout for mule deer. He was after a velvet buck he knew was hanging around the area. He parked his truck on a forest road, loaded up his UTV with gear, and took his six-year-old German shorthaired pointer, Buddy, along for the ride.
By the next morning, Schmitt was barely hanging on to life—crawling out of the mountains with nothing but his dog leading the way. He says without Buddy, he wouldn’t be here to tell the story.
The Roll
The climb started rough. The trail got steeper and sketchier as Schmitt drove higher with Buddy riding along. He began second-guessing if they could really make it to the top. The plan was to stop soon and hike the rest of the way on foot.
Earlier that day, Schmitt had spotted a mule deer buck at a distance. But before he could get closer, something else pulled him off track.
“Fifteen minutes before I wrecked, I came upon an elk calf caught in a trap,” Schmitt tells Outdoor Life. “I stopped, got out with my dog, and wrestled the elk calf out of the trap. To me, trapping in a calving area seems ignorant. We need every elk calf we can get. She walked away fine, but it was a hell of an experience.”
Not long after freeing the calf, Schmitt turned a bend and eased partway up an incline. He decided to back down and park at the bottom. Somewhere in that process, a tire must have clipped a hidden stump. He never saw it.
The UTV tipped. Schmitt tried bailing out mid-roll, but he didn’t make it. The machine crushed him on its first flip, then launched him through the windshield as it kept tumbling.
The damage was brutal: his left leg shattered—fibula and tibia both broken. His right shoulder was dislocated. Both ankles were broken, his ribs cracked, wrists sprained, and his body was cut and bruised everywhere.
“I was beat up like a rag doll,” Schmitt says. “I stopped rolling, then assessed my legs while I could still hear the side-by-side rolling. And it was still running, so in my mind I’m thinking, ‘I don’t want to be the guy who dies out here and starts a wildfire.’”
The Crawl
The UTV rolled 15–20 times before finally stopping at the bottom of the hill. Miraculously, Buddy was out. During all that chaos, the dog had somehow escaped. When Schmitt dragged himself down to the wreck, he found Buddy’s crate still strapped in the back—but empty.
Around dusk, battered and broken, Schmitt tried to stand. He couldn’t. Then he saw Buddy—right there beside him.
“No lights, no phone. Pistol, rifle, inReach, all gone. It was a yard sale,” Schmitt says. “Everything was gone but my dog.”
He managed to dig out a roll of duct tape from the wreckage. With scraps of the UTV, he fashioned a splint for his broken leg, cinching it down with his belt to keep the bones in place.
“I wouldn’t say I’m proud of myself, but I’m happy with the knowledge that I had,” he says. “We live in a world where we have a thing for this and a thing for that, but when you get shipped down a mountain and it all flies away from you, that stuff doesn’t mean anything. You need to know self-rescue.”
With that, the crawl began. Inch by inch, in the dark, Schmitt dragged his battered body forward. Buddy refused to leave him. When Schmitt collapsed or passed out, Buddy nudged him awake—sometimes even sat on him until he stirred.
“When I passed out,” he says, “my dog would nudge me or sit on me to wake me up.”
Crossing creeks was the worst. Schmitt couldn’t carry his busted leg, so Buddy became the crutch—letting him rest his broken limb across the dog’s back until they got across the water. Buddy’s collar, fitted with a tiny LED light, gave Schmitt just enough glow to crawl forward.
“It’s the greatest light I’ve ever seen in my life. I turned it on, and I could see five feet in front of me. So, I kept crawling.”
The Recovery
At first, Schmitt thought it would take about three hours to crawl the five miles back to his truck. If he could just make it there, he figured he could drive himself to Oakley, the nearest town.
But reality hit harder. By the time he reached his truck, 11 hours had passed. The “spotlight” he thought he saw wasn’t search and rescue—it was the sunrise.
“I don’t think I’d be talking to you now if that dog hadn’t been there,” Schmitt says. “I don’t care how tough you are. Everyone wants to give up when it’s excruciating, but he’d come over and make me feel good enough to get right back up.”
Schmitt was rushed to Park City Hospital. Surgeons put rods and screws in his leg and closed it with nearly 100 staples. He’ll be moving slow for the next four to six weeks, but the swelling is easing, the bruises fading. Friends have set up a GoFundMe to help cover medical costs.
Even with all that, Schmitt isn’t done with the mountains. He’s already talking about guiding hunters this fall—and going back to the spot where it all happened. Only this time, he won’t be driving. He’ll be hiking. And Buddy, of course, will be with him.
“He gets T-bone steaks for the rest of his life.”