A Maine duck hunter had to be rescued from chest-deep mud Friday after he got stuck trying to retrieve a bird.
The man was roughly 300 feet from shore in Sebasticook Lake when the Newport Fire Department responded around 12:45 p.m., Chief Jeff Chretien said. The man was not injured.
Chretien has never had to rescue a person from mud in more than 26 years, but he said the firefighters all thought on the fly. They came up with the idea of throwing ladders on top of the mud to walk on, which worked.
Once they got close enough to the man, they threw a rope and a sled and they got him free of the mud, Chretien said. He was pulled in the sled to the ladders before walking back to shore.
“We had a hard time getting him out,” Chretien said. “His waders were full. I bet his waders weighed 400 pounds by the time we got him out of it.”
The lake’s water level was low because the dam drained in early September as it does every year, Chretien said.
The dead duck was in the water about another 100 feet from where the man was stuck, Chretien said. Typically the only way for a person to go out and retrieve a duck is by canoe or kayak, he said.
A firefighter let the man borrow a kayak to go retrieve the duck after the rescue, Chretien said. A Maine game warden asked the man to retrieve the duck.
“If you do something dumb, you still shot an animal,” Chretien said. “It’s your job to take care of it.”