Sheep hunter dies in Alaska Range south of Fairbanks
Posted: Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Tim Mowry/tmowry@newsminer.com

FAIRBANKS—A sheep hunter from Texas was killed in the Alaska Range south of Fairbanks on Friday after a large rock fell on him as he was walking along a creek bottom.

Manuel Rechy, 48, of Laredo, Texas, was on a guided hunt in the area of Red Mountain and Dry Creek, 49 miles east of the Parks Highway near Healy, when the accident occurred, according to Alaska State Troopers.

The guide who owns the guiding company Rechy was hunting with, Eric Umphenour, of Fairbanks, called the accident “a freak deal.”

“A rock came down the hill and crushed him,” Umphenour said. “It wasn’t a rock slide; it was just one big boulder.

“It was a freak act of God,” he said. “It’s like being struck by lightning.”

Rechy and an assistant hunting guide were walking down a creek bottom at around 6:30 p.m., scouting for Dall sheep, when the large rock broke loose from about 30 feet above them on a hill, Umphenour said.

“(The assistant guide) saw it coming and told him to get out of the way, but the guy wasn’t fast enough,” he said. “It’s not like we were walking up cliffs. They were in a creek bottom. It was in the valley floor.”

The rock, which Umphenour estimated weighed 1,000 pounds, slammed into Rechy, knocking him in the creek and causing serious injuries to his legs. The assistant guide pulled the hunter out of the creek and covered him with his coat before going to alert Umphenour. When the two guides returned less than an hour later, Rechy was unresponsive, Umphenour said.

Umphenour used a satellite phone to call Alaska State Troopers, who were notified at 7:41 p.m. Troopers attempted to fly a helicopter to the scene but turned back due to bad weather, trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters said.

Troopers alerted the Rescue Coordination Center in Anchorage, which in turn notified the Alaska Air National Guard. Rescuers arrived at the scene of the accident at around 2 a.m., about six hours after troopers were notified, Umphenour said. Rechy was flown to Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

Umphenour, who has been guiding in the area for 20 years, said he doesn’t know what caused the rock to move. It had been raining all day Friday prior to the accident, he said.

“It’s a creek I’ve been up 20 or 30 times over the course of 20 years,” Umphenour said. “We snowmobile up it in the winter.”

While he didn’t know Rechy well, the Texan was a repeat customer, Umphenour said. “A lot of his friends had hunted with us. He was no stranger to us.”

On Tuesday, Umphenour was still having a hard time trying to process what happened.

“I’ve never had anything like that happen,” he said. “When somebody dies in a hunting accident they usually get shot.”

Sheep photo copyright Jim Robertson