Anderson: Hunter’s ‘selfless act’ of saving a friend’s dog was his last

In the end, after the dive team had recovered Chris Hendricks’ body from a frigid North Dakota slough, and after word of Chris’ death reached his family and friends, no one who knew him was surprised that he had stripped off his hunting clothes and splashed into the wetland to save a friend’s dog.

A high school soccer player who also ran track and cross-country, and who at 30 years old remained trim and fit, Chris and longtime pal Max DiVenere had pulled alongside the Eszlinger Waterfowl Production Area early on the morning of Nov. 12.

As the two men toted their decoys to the wetland’s shore, Clyde, Max’s young yellow Labrador, sprinted alongside.

Chris and Max had met when both were students at Indiana University. The two shared a passion for duck and goose hunting, and with the same gusto that they hoped that morning to swing their 12 gauges on a few mallards, they had started IU’s first Ducks Unlimited Chapter.

Chris even rented a garage near the school to keep his duck boat handy.

After graduating, Max remained in Indiana for a time, while Chris took a job in the Twin Cities with Polaris, the manufacturer of ATVs and other power-sports products.

The Polaris job was a dream fit for Chris, and as product manager for the company’s Ranger utility vehicles, he sought customers’ feedback and opinions wherever he traveled.

“Chris was book smart, but he was also street smart,” said Halli Hoyt, who worked with Chris at Polaris. “He and my husband once hiked 40 miles in three days in the Utah mountains. As my husband put it. ‘Chris is one tough mother.’”

Some of that toughness might have originated on the Iron Range, where Chris’ dad, Joe Hendricks, was raised, along with three brothers and a sister. The Hendricks boys hunted grouse, ducks and deer, and when Joe, an engineer, moved to Indiana, a little bit of the Ranger moved with him.

“I took Chris hunting with me the first time when he was 12,” Joe said. “I can still remember the first goose he shot. Since then, he and his friend Max have been all over to hunt. Arkansas. Missouri. Oklahoma. Utah. The Dakotas. Even to New Zealand and Colombia.”

Living in Champlin, just north of Minneapolis, Chris was a short drive from his uncle John Hendricks’ place in North Branch.

A brother of Chris’ dad, John lives on 60 acres. Chris killed his first deer on the property, and also hunted ducks and geese on a neighbor’s wetland.

“Max was in the Ashley Medical Center emergency room being treated for hypothermia and exposure,” John said. “He said he tried to reach Chris’ parents, but couldn’t. He wasn’t fully coherent, so I couldn’t understand everything he was saying. Finally I said, ‘Max, is Chris breathing?’ And he said ‘No, Chris is not breathing.’ He said Chris was still in the lake where they had been hunting.

“That was when I called Chris’ mom, Sue. Then I called my brother, Joe, and it was god-awful.”

Joe was in his pickup about an hour from his Indiana home when his phone rang. Just six hours earlier he had been enjoying himself at his brother’s place in North Branch, hunting, and now there was this news about Chris.

Chris’ parents would learn that a duck Max and Chris had shot had landed in the lake, which was skimming over with ice.

Excited to retrieve the bird, Clyde, Max’s Labrador, was quickly into the water and headed to the outer edge of the hunters’ decoys. But Clyde soon became entangled in ice and flailed about, struggling.

But the eagle wouldn’t have known that Chris and Max were especially traumatized by what was unfolding, because they had seen this movie before.

On a similarly bitter fall day a few years back, at Uncle John’s place in North Branch, Max’s previous Labrador had broken through lake ice and drowned.

“Not again,” Chris must have said to himself, and he hurriedly peeled off his heavy hunting coat, pants and long underwear, and rushed into the lake, wearing only his skivvies.

Reaching Clyde in 7 feet of water, he freed the dog.

But the water was cold — numbing — and as Chris turned for shore, his body stiffened.

In that North Dakota slough, with autumn in full sweep, life was leaving Chris’ body.

Then it was gone altogether, the life in him, and he slipped beneath the surface.

His lungs filled with wetland muck, and freezing, Max struggled to shore, grabbed his cellphone, and ran to a nearby hilltop, where he called 911.

Alongside him was Clyde, the dog’s yellow coat dripping wet.

A farmer who is part of the local volunteer fire department heard Max’s call and raced to help.

Their son was a hunter. That much was obvious to anyone who knew him.

But he was also a brother, a cousin, a nephew, a friend, a helper, an employee, a hard worker, a conservationist and a reader whose bookshelves were filled with tomes by Herman Melville, C.S. Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac and many others, including nonfiction authors.

Halli Hoyt, Chris’ colleague at Polaris, put it this way.

“When I heard Chris had died in an accident, and I didn’t yet know the particulars, I knew it had to be some sort of selfless act. It just had to be.

“Because Chris had a big heart.”