I want to tell you fellas (and ladies) about a time a few years ago when I was hunting a large northern Brooks county pasture. The landowner and some of his cronies met me at the gate that morning and told me that this would be a morning hunt only. His plane was to be headed back to Dallas by mid afternoon, so we would hunt thru the morning and start back to the gate around 1 PM. He told me, “Look, we may find birds or not. This pasture has never been known to hold great numbers of quail, so no pressure”.
I thought to myself “ Yeah, right.”

He explained that the pasture itself was roughly bisected by a pavement running north and south, and a highline running east and west. We would stay in one quadrant.

We followed the road to the highline and then turned and drove along the broad power company’s right-of-way out to a convenient trail we would follow for most of the morning.

I wish I could say it was a crisp cool morning, but no…it was a typical South Texas morning. Too warm, and too humid. On top of that, recent rains had left the ground wet, if not muddy. Despite the beautifully clear day, I stayed soaked all morning.

We did find some coveys that morning…enough to keep it interesting. Altho we try to follow the old adage of taking no more than two birds per covey, I remember at least one covey rise where two shooters were on the ground, and four birds fell. I think maybe it happened more than once. Those guys could shoot.

Just before one o’clock, the hunt was called, and we headed back onto the broad right-of-way we had followed into the pasture. As my driver/helper opened a dog box on my truck, I began removing the electric collar and GPS collar from a pointer while he was still in the box. Every time I touched the dog or its collar, I was getting a charge of electricity. I danced, and cussed my way thru two pointers and a Labrador while the hunters all laughed and hooted at my antics. “Serves you right”, one exclaimed. “You’ve been doing the same to them all morning!”

I was thoroughly exasperated. I had at first, thought maybe one of the collars had gone bananas. Then, after they had all been removed from the dogs, and turned off, I reached up and stroked my old faithful labrador’s back, and was nearly knocked to my knees for the umpteenth time. I decided that maybe a sparkplug wire had come off. So I turned the truck off. Nope, my old lab was calmly sitting on the truck bed, in front of the dog boxes, and still was knocking the coondog out of me!

I finally looked up, and realized that my truck, its aluminum dog boxes and steel bed had become a giant conductor, and was sitting squarely under a high tension highline…. The highline had induced voltage into my truck chassis, and I, with my soaking wet body and feet, was conducting same into the wet ground.

People! Don’t Do That!

Pointer

Great story.

I had the same thing happen to me when I was wade fishing. Not cool!

Hilarious

Hence the reason you see crushed gravel at power facilities.

Yep - that HV stuff creeps me out . . . . It's determined to take whatever path possible

. . . even when turned off:
[video:youtube]YouTube URL:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMbN9nb3qyk&feature=player_detailpage[/video]