Reg Foggerdy – 6 Days without water

Time stranded: 6 days

Distance traveled: 20 – 30 miles

Terrain types: Desert

Deaths: 0

Situation ended: Found by rescuers

Location: Western Australia

Reg Foggerdy was a 62-year-old grandfather from Perth during the time of his story which happened in 2015. He was in a remote area of Western Australia with his brother on a hunting trip that was focused on hunting one particular feral camel they had permission to shoot. After sighting the camel, Reg slowly crept closer with his hunting rifle and fired a shot, but the bullet only managed to wound the camel and it ran off into the outback.

Reg was so excited about making the shot and without thinking ran after the camel into the wilderness, hoping it would slow down enough to allow him to catch up and make a second shot. He followed the camel’s footsteps for several miles but eventually lost sight of its tracks, and it was only at the point he gave up the chase that he realized how lost he was.

He didn’t recognize any of his surroundings and wasn’t even sure which way it was back to camp, but began to walk in what he thought was the right direction and ended up making his situation much worse.

“I followed this camel into the bush, I had walked at least 30 kilometers and didn’t know where I was”.

The area of Western Australia that he was hunting in is home to a huge expanse of land that’s made up of barren hills and has very little vegetation, with water sources often having dozens of miles in between them. After he knew he was lost, instead of using all his energy to try to get somewhere, he found a small group of trees and sat down in the shade.

Earlier that year he had experienced heart problems and was in no physical shape to walk for miles across the desert, and not knowing how to get back left him with only one option, wait until rescue came.

His brother back at the camp noticed he was missing and reported it to the authorities who organized a search party. For the first few days, they found no sign of Reg and began to fear the worst, but during all this time he was sitting under a tree eating ants using a method he said he learned from Bear Grylls.

Reg heard several search helicopters during his ordeal but none of them came close enough to see him, and he began to accept that he might die.

He later said in an interview “I was at peace with myself and just wanted to lie there and pass away. I was thinking of my family who would see me laying there.”

After being missing for 6 days with nothing to drink, a local aboriginal man found an out-of-place footprint in his territory and knowing a man was missing in the area, led investigators to it. The rescue operation began to focus on one area and soon enough one of the search helicopters saw Reg under his tree.

He was picked up and taken to hospital where he was severely dehydrated and suffering from malnutrition and sunburn, but had no life-threatening injuries and after a short stay managed to make a full recovery. When asked about his experience and if he would ever go back to the desert again, he replied “I might go back and look for my gun. It’s still in the shrub.”