A 19-year-old outdoorsman in East Texas was struck by lightning Saturday while fishing from shore on the Angelina River. The strike exploded a nearby pine tree and sent the young man flying, while the electrical charge traveled through his body, causing him to lose consciousness. Then, just as suddenly, he came to.
“As soon as I hit the ground on my back, I woke up. And my mother, who I was fishing with, she was all screaming, ‘My baby!,’ and whatnot,” Hunter Wyche tells Outdoor Life. “I’d woken up from my little blackout, and I was telling my mom, ‘Calm down. It’s okay.’ I couldn’t feel my legs whatsoever, so I told her, ‘I can’t feel my legs, but your son is alive.’”
Within 20 minutes, EMT’s had arrived to transport Wyche in a helicopter to Hermann Memorial Hospital in Houston. He was released from the hospital Sunday morning with some serious scarring but no major injuries. The feeling had also returned to his legs. And aside from earning a new nickname — his friends now call him “Sparky” — Wyche has carried on with his life as usual.
“It’s supposed to be more than a one-in-a-million chance that you get struck by lightning. And, furthermore, it’s gotta be [even lower odds] that you actually live from it,” says Wyche. “I don’t really think anybody should take a lesson from this. But I think there are some people who would like to know that this happened, and that there’s some kid out there who lived through it.”
A Blown-Up Pine Tree and a Deep-Fried Ugly Stik
Wyche, who lives in Jasper, Texas, had fished that shoreline of the Angelina many times before. The large cove sits off the main channel, and it’s near the public boat ramp at Bevelport. When he and his mom, Michelle, got there around 5 p.m. on Saturday, it was raining lightly. There was also thunder rolling in the distance, but it wasn’t nearly close enough to cause them concern.
Besides, Wyche says, “that sprinkling weather really is about the best time to be out fishing.”
The two were after catfish, and Wyche spent the first 30 minutes catching bluegills on worms. He’d already brought in a couple ‘gills — enough to bait two catfish rods — but he wanted to catch a few more for the bait bucket. Standing on a bluff about 10 feet over the water and 30 feet from his mom, Wyche was leaning against a pine tree with one hand and working his lightweight Ugly Stik with the other.
Then the pine tree blew up. The shock of the explosion sent an unconscious Wyche flying backwards about five feet. His back slammed into another tree and he hit the ground, where he quickly regained consciousness.
“It sounded just like what you would hear in a war movie,” Wyche says. “I heard a big boom, and then it was silent, and then I heard a loud ringing.”
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The next thing Wyche heard was his mom screaming and crying. He reassured her that he was okay, aside from the lack of feeling in his legs and the cuts all over his body. A crowd of people who were fishing nearby had gathered around, and several bystanders had already called 911.
Pine shrapnel had been driven deep into the skin on his arms, chest, and face; He’s lucky he didn’t lose an eye (or both). Both legs were numb, but especially his right leg, which was bruised from the hip down and had all the hair singed off. Scars on his belly and right foot showed the path the lightning bolt traveled through his body. His fishing rod was also fried to its handle, the graphite and fiberglass broken and frayed.
“I still have a great memory of everything that happened. It was just that split second from when the lightning hit me to when I hit the ground,” Wyche says. “I was cracking jokes with everybody, because this whole crowd of people ended up around me. I was having a good time.”
He says he’s still amazed with how quickly first responders got there — first the Sheriff’s deputies, then the firemen, and then an ambulance. After putting Wyche in a neck brace and on a backboard, the EMT’s carried him away from the river and drove him to a nearby airfield, where he was picked up in a helicopter and flown to the hospital in Houston.
Back on the Water
Wyche spent a sleepless Saturday night at Hermann Memorial, where doctors assessed his injuries and cleared him of anything serious. The sensation in his legs had fully returned by 6 a.m. Sunday, when his dad picked him up and took him home. (He still has deep bruising and singed hair on his right leg, along with some wicked scars on his stomach and face.)
“We got home and I slept until eleven,” he says. “Then I woke up, drank a couple cups of coffee, and my buddy called me. So, we went down to our local dam on Sam Rayburn and went fishing.”
Wyche, who was happily raised in the outdoors, says a lot of people have been surprised that he was back on the water within 24 hours of being electrocuted.
“I definitely got a lot more electricity than some people are realizing,” Wyche says. “But the reality of it is, dude, I’m a country boy. And I don’t care about little crap like that. I’m gonna get around and do my thing.”
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