72-year-old Gene Penaflor was just rescued Saturday after getting lost and disoriented in a remote part of Mendocino County while on a hunting trip. He ended up spending 19 days alone surviving on meat of three squirrels and a snake, and eating some algae and woodland berries.
Penaflor had gone out into the woods with a friend on September 24, and the two split up to hunt deer. It sounds like some fog rolled in and he got his foot wedged in some sort of crevice. He says he fell and hit his head, passed out, and when he came to he didn't know quite where he was or how to get back.
All he had with him was a garbage bag, a gun, and seven bullets, and he survived by sleeping under a log and covering himself with leaves it can get cold up there this time of year, and he even saw a couple of snowfalls. He now seems regretful that three squirrels had to die for his survival.
Luckily there was plenty of water around and he wasn't too badly injured, and some other hunters heard his cries for help in a remote canyon on Saturday. They called for medical help and Penaflor ultimately got helicoptered out. He was out of the hospital and back home with his family on Sunday, where KTVU and other news outlets caught up with him.
Even though Penaflor had only wandered about 3 miles away from where he was last seen near the Bloody Rock area of the Mendocino National Forest, search and rescue crews in the area still had not found him after looking for two weeks.
As you may or may not know, Americans have a long history of squirrel eating, so much so that there's a fricaseed squirrel recipe in James Beard's seminal American Cookery.
