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| One of Two Missing Baldwin County Hunters Found Dead in the Gulf |
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| By Nick Carter |
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Posted Friday January 22 2010, 1:42 PM |
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A month after they left in a canoe to go squirrel hunting on the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, the body of one of two missing Baldwin County hunters was retrieved from the Gulf of Mexico on Jan. 5. There is still no sign of the second hunter.
The body of Alan Clemens, 29, of Hurricane Bayou, was spotted by a commercial helicopter working oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico about 45 miles south of Mobile Bay.
A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter out of New Orleans was dispatched to mark the body, and a Coast Guard cutter out of Mobile retrieved the body on the evening of Jan. 5. Clemens was pulled from the water about 80 miles, as the crow flies, from where the two men’s canoe was found adrift on the afternoon of Dec. 6 on the Tensaw River, said Matt Burton, with North Baldwin County Search and Rescue.
“We haven’t found anything on Jason Brown,” said Burton.
Clemens and his 23-year-old cousin, Jason Brown, also of Hurricane Bayou, launched in a canoe on the Tensaw River on Dec. 6 to go squirrel hunting. They were last seen heading south near Gravine Island less than 2 miles from where they put in.
Their canoe was found partially swamped with a cooler and two rifles still in it on the evening of Dec. 6. Rescue crews later found two paddles that were verified to be the paddles the men had left with. Luther Peebles, chief of North Baldwin County Search and Rescue, said it looked like the two men had fallen out of the canoe.
“We haven’t found any more evidence of any type,” said Burton. “No debris, none of their effects, nothing.”
Search crews are still searching on an inconsistent basis for the body of Brown, said Burton, but the once massive effort to find the hunters when it was believed they could still be alive waned weeks ago. In the weeks after the disappearance, nine state and federal agencies and local organizations, as well as civilian volunteers carried out extensive daily searches in the Delta by water, land and air.
Clemen’s body was turned over for an autopsy, but no official cause of death has been released yet. Burton said the incident is being treated as a boating accident, and foul play is not suspected.
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