On the evening of October 8, 2019, 57-year-old Mark Henderson Jr., a White man from Eustis, Maine, was on a remote logging road near the northwest shore of Flagstaff Lake for bird hunting when he called the Franklin County Regional Communications Center at 5:56 p.m. He reported that he had accidentally shot himself in the lower leg with birdshot. A multi-agency search and rescue response deployed game wardens, Maine State Police, U.S. Border Patrol, and NorthStar EMS to the area on the border of northern Franklin and Somerset counties.

A game warden found Henderson near his truck at about 7:06 p.m., began CPR and transported him in his own truck while a state trooper drove to meet an ambulance at Big Eddy Road. Emergency personnel continued life-saving measures for roughly 40 minutes, but Henderson succumbed to his injuries; his death was the first hunting-related fatality in Maine that year. He was described as an avid outdoorsman, hunter and fisherman who had moved to Eustis, worked as a lineman and union steward for Central Maine Power, and left behind a companion, children and grandchildren.

Was anyone hunting nearby that evening who might have information about Henderson’s last hours?