The elder of the two men remembered when he was the same age as the younger one, of how he had gone out with his grandfather to learn the skills of hunting, but had instead grown to love the animals, saving many young elk who had fallen into hidden ditches and crevices, taking them on his dog sledin order to return them to the herd. But it was his task now to take the youngsters from the local high school onto the land in order to teach them vital hunting and survival skills, which he begrudgingly did in some instances as the animals were such beautiful specimens.

As the day drew on, they'd been lucky and bagged a couple of large elk, but on travelling on the soft snow in their skiddoos (snow-mobiles), they were so earnest in following the herd that they hadn't realised they'd jumped over what they thought was a mound of snow but turned out to be a small cliff, both careering headlong over it and down into the very deep soft snow. Both skiddos were damaged leaving the younger of the men with minor bruises but the older one with a bad leg injury. The younger one pulled him out of the "mountain" of snow and left him at its base tucked up in a warm blanket with all he needed around him. The intention was that the younger one would hike back to the small town and bring back help, hopefully within a couple of hours before dusk.

Six hours passed, then eight, and still there was no sign of a rescue party. The older man by then was beginning to feel the cold and had to somehow set up a fire for the night. He decided to drag and pull himself a few hundred yards to some bushes and trees to try and gather some wood, but he hadn't bargained on it getting so dark so fast and found himselfstranded on a frozen patch of clear land. He shivered, looking out for any flicker of light in the intense darkness and shouted whenever he thought he saw something. Time went on and he began to shiver even more with cold, eating snow to give himself something to drink. He was just about giving up when he saw two pairs of flickering lights and felt relived that soon he was to be rescued. He decided to rest until they came up to him, having left a torch alight beside him wrapped up in a scarf to stop the batteries from freezing. What he didn't realise was that he'd fallen asleep as he now was suffering from hypothermia.

Morning came, and a party of six men followed the skidoo tracks to the top of the cliff and on looking down expected to see the older man frozen to death, but instead saw an unbelieveable sight. There, in the middle of the frozen clear area were two female elk both laying nose-to-tail with the older man in the middle! As the party climbed down the cliff, the two elk then ran off and as they tended the older man's broken leg they asked him what had happened. He spoke of seeing the two sets of "double lights" coming towards him and that he thought it had been the rescue party coming in the distance and of how he'd fallen asleep with cold. Then later on, was amazed to wake up to all-over warmth and comfort to find the two elk laying either side of him, occasionally licking his face to keep it from freezing. He was even more surprised when they failed to jump up and run away as he began to talk softly to them on waking, only doing so when they saw the rescue party fast advancing upon them after having climbed down the cliff edge.

As four of the party were [Natives], the older man asked them why the elk had done that, when his original intention was to kill their own kind. The [Natives] said that he must have done some kindness to the elk in the past and that they could see it in his spirit, so did likewise for him, despite his having killed two of their kind the day before.
 

- by Chrissie Gillies.