Hey EdP, You were smart to pass that flooded road job up.....If you remember where the southside Wal-Mart is, there is a floodwall behind it near where 3rd street runs.
There is a shallow slough between that floodwall & the river that the locals call the ducks nest....Well back in the early 80's that slough was beaver central and a great coon location....The deal with the landowner was take out some beaver and catch all the other fur we wanted.
This kid I was trapping with back then was a 120 pound, high strung, tobacco chewing redneck, with a Waylon Jennings graphic on the back glass of his pickup. We were running late to check the beaver traps one morning when my buddy got the great idea to take a shortcut across a shallow flooded backwater field road to the east side of the slough to save time. We were doing fine until we reached the spot where a ford spanned a small creek that normally drained said slough.
You know that old saying "What you don't know won't hurt you"....Well that don't apply to beaver trapping while driving on flooded roads, Lol....We missed the ford, Yep, 7 ft straight to the bottom will really clear your head on a cold morning, and fortunately our waders were always the last thing we put on...I've heard it said you can't swim in cold water, well the heck you can't, the problem is you "can't breathe", so your not going far...Luckily we didn't have very far to go to get mostly out of the backwater.... Think we might have set some kind of speed record getting back up on that road bed before going numb... Then we had to stumble run like a couple drunks for 1/2 mile to a gas station. Lol.
Dumb move for sure, but at 20 those weren't in short supply.
