Montana Teen Hunters Save Dads, Grandpa After They are Poisoned by Carbon Monoxide in Tent

With fall big-game hunting seasons in full swing, a reminder that tents and propane heaters do not mix.

From this story in the Missoulian:
_The teenage boys who were in hunting camp near Lima with their fathers and grandfather did everything right after the men were discovered unconscious from carbon monoxide poisoning. Sheri Cook, whose husband Randy Cook, 44, was one of the three men found unconscious Monday morning, said her twin 14-year-old boys and other boys ages 16, 15 and 13 stayed cool during a tense situation. “They saved their lives – they’re heroes,” Cook said in a telephone interview from LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City Tuesday evening. “They really knew what they were doing.”
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_Randy Cook, of Missoula; Bret Butler, 50, of Frenchtown; and Carl Saunders, 65, of Frenchtown, were all upgraded from critical to serious condition Tuesday, said Jess Gomez, LDS spokesman. Sheri Cook said her husband was conscious and recovering in his hospital bed. The three men had to be flown from Barrett Hospital in Dillon to Pocatello, Idaho, and then on to LDS Hospital after they were found by the younger members of their hunting party Monday morning. The teenage boys slept in a tent with a wood stove and were unharmed, but in the morning they found the three older men whose tent had a propane heater unconscious, said Beaverhead County Sheriff Jay Hansen.

The teenage boys discovered the older men around 8 a.m. in their camp at the East Fork of Little Sheep Creek trailhead, near Lima, in extreme southwestern Montana. Lima is 112 miles south of Butte. “They got in there Sunday night and put up their tent and they all went to sleep,” Hansen said. “The boys woke up and found the three adult males in that situation.” Sheri Cook said the boys, whom she did not want to name, immediately sent one of the teenagers in a vehicle to get into cellphone range so he could make an emergency call. The other four stayed and pulled the men out of the tent.

Sheri Cook said her boys later recalled that at first they were tense. But they fell back on some skills learned in Boy Scouts.

“Each had their little instances of panic, but they all knew what needed to be done,” she said._