Hunting season ended recently, but for Mark Adkins, one moment still stands out—not for any trophies he brought home, but for the life he helped save.
Adkins, a utility forester, and his wife, Tiffany, live close by West Virginia’s Beech Fork State Park where they’d spent a long and uneventful day of hunting. On the drive home, they spotted a teenaged boy standing alone on the side of the road, his phone pressed to his ear. Something about the moment felt off.
“At first we thought he looked like someone we knew, so we turned around to check on him and make sure he was OK,” Adkins said. “That’s when we found out the boy’s dad needed help.”
The 14-year-old was frantic. His father had fallen 20 feet from a tree stand while hunting and was badly hurt. With spotty cell service in the remote area, Adkins said it was a miracle the boy had been able to connect with 911. Since the Adkinses knew the area so well, they were able to tell the dispatcher exactly where they were located.
Adkins and his wife didn’t hesitate to jump in to help. They rushed into the forest and found the injured man lying on the ground with his own father standing by, unsure of what to do. The man, his father and his son were from South Carolina and had come to West Virginia just for this hunting trip.
“He had obvious leg injuries and was drifting in and out of consciousness,” Adkins said. “I knew we had to keep him awake and as stable as possible until help arrived.”
When it became clear that first responders would struggle to reach them in the rough and heavily forested terrain, Adkins sprinted back to his truck and drove to his nearby home to grab his side-by-side utility vehicle. By the time he returned, emergency crews had arrived, and together, they carefully transported the injured man out of the woods and into an ambulance.
Greg Bell, director of distribution risk and project management, said it was the safety culture of a questioning attitude that may have changed the fate for the hunter.
“When Mark noticed something didn't seem right as he passed by the young man on the side of the road, that allowed for his company first aid training to come into play,” Bell said.
Looking back, Adkins has no doubt that everything unfolded the way it was meant to. The incident was eerily familiar for Adkins. At 19, he had also suffered severe injuries after falling from a tree stand while hunting alone on his grandparents’ property, land that borders the very forest where he and his family live today. Without a cell phone or anyone knowing where he was, he had been forced to literally crawl back to his grandparents’ house for help.
“That experience never leaves you,” Adkins said. “I know what it’s like to fall from a height like that, being alone in the woods and not sure how you’re going to survive.”
And in another twist of fate, Adkins might not have been on that road at all if his own hunt had gone differently that day.
“If we had taken a deer, we almost certainly wouldn’t have seen that boy,” he said. “Everything lined up for us to be there. You just never know where the Lord’s going to put you to be of help to someone else.”
For Adkins, the experience underscored the importance of being prepared for the unexpected. The first aid training he receives through AEP’s safety and health programs didn’t just help him in the workplace, it made a life-or-death difference when it mattered most.