Luckily, he wasn’t paralyzed, but he underwent major surgery, wit 11-inch rods being used to repair the injury, leaving a 24-inch scar on his back. It took two days before they could get Pearle to stand for X-Rays, which revealed three broken vertebrae and a twisted spine. He was rushed to Tobey Hospital, then airlifted to the Trauma Center at Rhode Island Hospital. Once they got to Pearle, they had to cut some of his hunting clothes in order to get him on a board and then carried him 300 yards through the woods to a nearby cranberry bog where an ambulance was waiting. They met the Wareham Paramedics, EMTs, police and firefighters at the head of the trail and guided them through the woods. Pearle had his cellphone, which he was able to retrieve from a pocket and called his oldest son, Brian, who knew where the stand was. I thought about rolling over and crawling on my belly but if I had any broken ribs and tried to roll, a broken rib could puncture a lung, then I’d be done for sure.” Then I began checking to see if I could wiggle my fingers and toes and I could, so that was a relief, but I hurt so bad there was no chance of getting up. “It took me 25 minutes before I started breathing somewhat normally, but it hurt. “I hit so hard it knocked the wind out of me and I was gasping for air,” said Pearle. While he was able to keep his head up, his body was level when he hit the ground and he landed flat on his back. “All I could think was - don’t fall on your head, don’t fall on your head,” Pearle recalled of the terrifying moment. He began kicking his feet to try and keep his body straight with his feet pointed down. The base immediately collapsed and went out from under him, like a trap door, and he tumbled to the ground. Confident the stand was secure, Pearle stepped from the pegs onto the base/platform of the stand and stood up. As he stood on the top pegs, he yanked on the stand, giving it a pull test to make sure it was tight to the tree and the strap hadn’t loosened, before stepping onto it. What could go wrong? To access the stand, he had foot pegs screwed into the tree. It was a new lock-on type stand that he set up this year, so it was in good condition. It was dark and cold, in the upper 20s, when he began to climb up into his stand before daylight, around 6 a.m., as most hunters do, so all would be quiet when legal hunting hours began around 6:45. Pearle was hunting legally near his home in Wareham during the muzzleloader season for deer when he plummeted 25 feet to the ground, breaking his back after his stand collapsed from under him. Matthew Pearle, 54, of Wareham, a husband, father of five (three sons and two daughters), a self-employed carpenter and an avid hunter since he was a teenager, was the victim of a hunting accident involving a sabotaged tree stand on Dec.
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