Searching For One Of Their Own Clark Fork Residents Turn Out In Force To Find Missing Hunter
Ray Anderson may not know it, but he’s got a lot of friends.
About 200 of them endured snow flurries and a steady drizzle to comb a mountainside for the local hunter who disappeared three days ago.
Anderson, 46, left Sunday morning to hunt elk on Antelope Mountain with several friends. The group split up and planned to meet at noon. Anderson never returned.
“We just can’t figure out what’s happened. He’s hunted this area hundreds of times,” said Anderson’s mother Vera Fjermestad. “He’s not lost. He’s hurt himself.”
Fjermestad, 67, is keeping vigil at her Clark Fork home with relatives from Washington, Montana and Idaho, praying for her son’s safe return.
“I’m just trying to hang in there and hoping they find him real soon,” she said. “Everytime it starts to get dark, I’m a nervous wreck.”
A steady stream of pickups and all-terrain vehicles slogged up to a search-and-rescue base camp northeast of Clark Fork on Tuesday.
Some brought fresh recruits to relieve the wet, cold and tired ones. Others hauled up hot, home-cooked meals donated by businesses, community groups and residents worried about losing one of their own.
“If I were out there I wouldn’t want them to stop looking for me,” said a drenched volunteer who lives in this town of 448 people.
“We gotta find him before that white stuff does,” he said, pointing to snow-topped mountain.
Anderson, who was raised in Clark Fork, is a skilled hunter and experienced outdoorsman. He works as an installer and repairman for GTE.
Eight of his fellow employees joined the search Tuesday along with residents, seven dog teams, U.S. Forest Service officers and search and rescue squads from Bonner and Kootenai counties and even Montana.
“Basically we are forming lines of people an arm’s length apart and covering every inch of ground that we can,” said Sheriff’s Cpl. Bob Howard, head of the rescue effort.
“It’s steep, rocky, a lot of cliffs and the cold is becoming a big concern,” Howard said. Anderson is without a jacket. He left it inside his truck.
The truck was found at the base of the mountain Sunday.
Anderson’s hunting partners tried to track him Sunday afternoon before reporting him missing. They went to his usual hunting haunts, even fired rounds from their guns into the air trying to get a response.
“Something bad had to happen to him because he knows this territory and couldn’t be lost,” said longtime hunting pal George Thornton. “It’s possible he had a heart attack or slipped and fell. Whatever happened, he’s obviously not able to respond to us.”
Anderson, who goes by the nicknames “Sonny” and “Ray Bob,” didn’t have any medical problems but was a little overweight, friends said. He also typically carries a small day pack with him with food and matches.
“Everybody around here knows him and we are all concerned,” Thornton said. “He’s one of our own.”
Some volunteers have been on the mountain for two days. They huddle under tents, around a campfire and kerosene heaters to stay warm while Red Cross workers feed them pots of soup and stew. Bonner General Hospital was sending up hot meals for 200 Tuesday night.
“I’ve been trying to get searchers to take sandwiches and fruit out with them because if they find Sonny alive he’s going to be hungry,” said Steve Derr, another of Anderson’s lifelong friends.
Authorities called off the search at dusk Tuesday. Some searchers will spend the night at the base camp and start over again this morning. But authorities said Anderson’s chances of survival are getting slimmer as time passes.
“You don’t want to think the worst or speculate on what might have happened,” Howard said. “But with no sign of him or any clues for two days, it doesn’t look good.”
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