Mike Durthaler here with another at-risk survivor submission. This may or may not qualify; it is just a good, humorous personal account. The date of this would be around the mid to late 60s. I heard it from my buddy around 1977 while on duty in Job Control at KI Sawyer AFB.

A friend I worked with at KI Sawyer AFB was from Kentucky and shared a dynamite fishing story one night. He was a typical good ‘ol boy, great manners, funny and made boring shifts go by with some amazing stories.

One was from his brother who qualified later for the Green Berets with several missing toes – he violated the safe weapons handling rule of never crossing a fence holding a hot firearm. It’s a great story but not the topic of this submission. I just recalled another story of his little brother that I’ll throw in with the missing toes story at another time.

I forget this fellow’s name but here’s the story.

He was bored once in his teens, came home from fishing once and lamented to his father that he hadn’t caught anything. His Dad told him where some abandoned mines were, to look in the explosives area and almost always there is some old dynamite.

A friend of his joined him and without checking (he admitted this) for sweating dynamite they just grabbed up half a dozen sticks/detonators and took them out fishing.

This went quite well. After quickly catching their fill – whatever the Kentucky “legal limit” was in this case , they spotted a tangled mass of roots. They decided there must be a lot of bass in that area of the lake.

Bear in mind here they were close enough to toss dynamite and detonator to this mass of roots. Well, when it exploded they quickly noted what went flying into the air – water moccasins. A you-know-what load of them.

In his words, “Mike, none of them landed in the boat or that close to it but we noted some of them weren’t squiggling at all – we didn’t have to worry about them. But … the ones that were still moving scared the hell out of us.”

He told me they never rowed so fast in their lives to get the hell out of there.

Sure, this is unconfirmed but still funny as hell. It rates for at-risk for 2 reasons – admitting to not check for sweating dynamite and also violating a good swimming rule for any lake – stay away from reeds, trees, roots in any very warm area of the country due to snakes. Poisonous ones.

Submitted on 04/09/2010

Submitted by: Mike Durthaler
Reference: None -- Personal Account

Copyright © 2010 DarwinAwards.com

Bruce said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
I think this is worthy of a PA. Not only is playing with old, sweaty dynamite extremely dangerous, but this kind of fishing is incredibly dangerous as well. The thought of suddenly discovering a bunch of airborne water also moccasins makes me chuckle. Thanks, Mike.

Candi said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account
Apparently they knew enough about dynamite to know to be careful, but weren't, and knew there were venomous snakes in the area, but blasted a obvious hiding place anyway. And the raining water moccasins makes me laugh, too! Thanks, Mike!

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