Stranded Hunters Survive Freezing Night on the Water by Building a Fire with Duck Decoys in Their Cooler

Gary Howell and his hunting partner Trey Lucas are third-generation waterfowlers from northwest Louisiana. The two have been hunting ducks in the South since childhood, and they’ve learned a thing or two about staying warm on the water over the years. Those survival skills made all the difference last week, when Howell and Lucas found themselves stranded on a large lake in flooded timber with a sunken boat and no way to call for help.

After 13 hours spent clinging to trees just over the water’s surface, Howell, 46, and Lucas, 61, were rescued by Texas game wardens and other first responders around 1:30 a.m. on Jan. 16. As they prayed and waited through the freezing night, they stayed warm and kept morale up by starting a fire in their cooler. The two hunters burned their decoys and other gear to keep the fire rolling, and the flames and smoke helped lead rescuers to their location on Bois D’Arc Lake. 

And now Howell knows the most efficient way to set an AvianX duck decoy on fire.

“I found out if you light them from the bill and then hold them upside down, that’s the best way,” Howell tells Outdoor Life. 

When Scouting Goes South

Bois D’Arc Lake is a newly built reservoir in Fannin County, Texas. It lies just south of the Oklahoma state line and not far from where Howell and Lucas live in Louisiana. The man-made impoundment was flooded in 2023, and it opened to public waterfowl hunting for the first time in October 2024. 

Howell was excited to get out and see the reservoir, and he and Lucas made time to hunt there for a week starting Saturday, Jan. 11. Exploring the lake was a rare experience, as they were likely the first duck hunters to scout some of the newly formed fingers and backwater coves.

“I’d bet money that we were [the first ones back there]. There were no trails or signs of activity, and no shotgun shells. Just the waterfowl and us,” Howell says of their first four days of hunting. “And we killed mallards every day.”

Getting to these secluded spots required some risky navigation, however, because in many places, the new lake covered standing forests that had been left behind when the impoundment was flooded. This meant Howell and Lucas were floating among the treetops as Howell navigated his 18-foot Pro Drive through the flooded timber.

On Wednesday afternoon, after a decent morning hunt on Bois D’Arc, the two hunters decided to explore a new area to the north, where they’d seen greenheads coming in. Howell ran the boat deeper into the flooded trees and they eventually found the spot — “it wasn’t really a hole, just a low spot in the timber,” he says. They planned to hunt there the next day, so they pre-staged their string of decoys and found a hide to make setup easier in the morning. 

“After that we were just kind of watching the ducks and enjoying the afternoon. It was a pretty evening. Blue skies, sunny, and cold.”

When it came time to leave, they gathered up their decoys and Howell weaved his boat through the flooded canopy. He and Lucas pushed and broke through limbs, just as they’d been doing since Saturday. But one particular treetop that Howell says “was thick around as a Coke can” wouldn’t break. When he eased on the mud motor’s gas, the limb bent and sprang back and shoved the boat’s stern into the water.

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“I looked back to see water coming over my transom,” says Howell, who wore overalls and rubber boots but no life jacket. “Then suddenly, I looked at my buddy, and I looked back at my feet and they were in the water … I just remember jumping out and going under.”

Waiting in Purgatory

When Howell came to the surface, he grabbed onto a boat cushion, his waterproof blind bag, and the bag of decoys that had floated up. Then he swam for the nearest tree. Lucas, who was wearing waders, had jumped out on top of the tree that wouldn’t break, and he was still holding onto the boat’s bow when Howell yelled at him to let go.

Most of their gear sank along with the boat. They lost their shotguns and cellphones, along with the boat’s emergency kit that held flares, whistles, and other important items. Lucas was able to recover the floating K2 cooler, along with some burlap they’d brought for a makeshift blind, and he used this material to make a tree saddle to sit in.

Howell, who was shivering uncontrollably after his swim, stood on the nubs of some cut tree limbs about 30 feet away from Lucas’ tree. He looked inside his blind bag, where he found a lighter and a crushed soda can. He broke off some twigs and lit a tiny fire atop the aluminum can as he balanced on the tree limbs.

“I held that can close to my heart, and man I was freezing, my hands were cold, everything was cold,” Howell says. “I don’t know what time this was, but I kept that little fire going long enough, and I just remember grabbing every twig I could. By nightfall I had a pocket full, and [the fire] had actually dried my chest out, because the can was so close to me.” 

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Lucas, meanwhile, had started using the cooler as a makeshift fire pit. A smoker, he carried two lighters in the chest pocket of his waders, and one still had a spark. As Lucas built a small stick fire in the cooler, and as darkness overtook the lake, Howell hung his decoys in the tree to see how well they’d burn. The hunters both knew swimming was suicide, and there wasn’t much they could do besides sit tight and pray. 

What Howell and Lucas didn’t know at the time was that their wives had notified the authorities after not hearing from the men at sunset. Howell and his wife also use Life360, a tracking app that showed the location where his phone and boat had gone down. Texas game wardens were already on their way by boat, along with officers from the Fannin County Sheriff’s Office and a rescue helicopter.

The hours that followed were somewhat blurry for Howell, who has a lower cold tolerance than most due to the chemo medication he takes. (Historical weather data shows air temps between 28 and 34 degrees in nearby Bonham that night, but it would have been even colder on the water.) He says there were a few times in between prayers when he started to nod off in his tree, only to have Lucas wake him up with a shout. He also remembers one vivid moment after sunset, when he thought he heard jet planes overhead. It turned out to be a huge wad of birds pouring into the timber.

“All I could hear was wood ducks and mallards coming in all around us. And I just kind of put my head on this tree and closed my eyes and prayed to God. I had Heaven above me and Hell below me. I was in Purgatory and didn’t know it.”

The Lights of Salvation

By some point in the cold night, Howell ran out of fuel for his soda-can fire. He’d burned everything within reach, including poison ivy and every scrap of bark he could peel off the tree. At this point, he says, he “was running on prayers.” Lucas, at least, was able to keep his cooler fire going by adding another deke every now and then. 

Finally, after hours of looking up at the stars, the two hunters saw helicopter lights in the distance. As the lights approached, Howell started throwing more decoys to Lucas, who was lighting them as fast as he could get his hands on them. The flame and smoke plume drew the helicopter even closer (Howell says the crew had thermal imaging equipment and could see their two bodies in addition to the fire), and it slowly circled in on their location.

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It would take the rescue crew another two and a half hours to reach Howell and Lucas by boat, because of how far back they were in the trees. When they made it to shore in the warm Sheriff’s boat, it was around 2 a.m. Howell collapsed on the dock. Both men were treated at a local hospital for severe hypothermia before they could return to the comforts of home and their families.

“It was a humbling experience because we take so much for granted. But thinking about touching my wife and kids, that’s what kept me hanging onto that tree,” Howell says. “The things we have in this world aren’t that valuable. But the people that you love and cherish are.”