Former Rochester Doctor Crawls for 16 Hours to Safety After Hunting Accident

Richard Olsen, of Rochester, is calling it "a Christmas miracle."  The retired Mayo doctor survived being trapped overnight on December 19 in a frozen North Dakota field after he broke his leg on a hunting trip.
He was hunting on a cousin's land in western North Dakota when he stepped on a thin crust of snow that was covering a drainage trench.  He collapsed through falling four feet to the bottom. His left leg hit first, and his femur snapped above the knee.

He said he knew he was in trouble and admitted to a lot of cussing but then reached for his shotgun and used it as a makeshift crutch. He forgot to bring his cell phone so he knew he'd have to find his own way out. Hopping with the gun-crutch wasn't going to work so Olsen started crawling to safety.

He crawled through brush and around dozens of frozen puddles, to avoid getting soaked. He was also forced to make detour around a rather wide pond.

Temperatures dropped as the sun did - into the teens overnight. As the doctor continued to crawl in his snow-covered and soaked hunting gear, he said he knew he was at risk of going into shock from hypothermia. He was also concerned about developing frostbite as his hands and feet were completely numb.

Olsen finally reached a fence near a road around 8 a.m. on December 20, roughly 16 hours after initially falling. With his vehicle in sight he was still far from safety. A steep ditch with heavy snow separated him from the fence and the road. He said he feared he was too exhausted and wouldn't be able to climb out of the ditch, which would leave him out of sight of anyone passing by. Instead of continuing on, he decided to sit there and wait for a driver he could flag down. Over the next half an hour he waved and screamed as six vehicles passed without stopping, until he was finally spotted.

A truck driver named Bryant Duncan, who at first thought Olsen was standing near the fence and yelling at someone else, almost kept driving but at the last moment did pull over. He ran to the injured doctor and, after realizing what was going on, wrapped him in blankets and called the police.

Olsen was taken to a local hospital and stabilized, he then had surgery on his leg and was flown to Saint Mary's Hospital where he is currently recovering.