PICKENS COUNTY, SC — A 53-year-old Greenville man who reportedly told his hunting companions "I don't need a GPS, I've been hunting these woods since I was 12" was recovered Saturday afternoon by a Pickens County Search and Rescue team after spending 19 hours lost in a section of the Jocassee Gorges he had, by his own admission, "never actually been to before."

Tommy Dean Shuler was located at approximately 2:15 p.m. sitting on a log beside a creek in what turned out to be Oconee County — one full county away from where he began his hunt Friday morning.

"I wasn't lost," Shuler said immediately upon rescue, despite having crossed two county lines, forded a river, and walked an estimated 11 miles in the wrong direction. "I was just taking the long way back."

His hunting partners grew concerned when Shuler failed to return to the truck at the agreed-upon time of 11:00 a.m. Friday. A text message sent at 10:47 a.m. reading "heading back now" was his last known communication before his phone died.

"Tommy's always been stubborn about navigation," said hunting partner Greg Blevins. "He won't use OnX, he won't use Google Maps, he's got a compass from 1987 that I'm pretty sure doesn't work. He says he 'reads the land.' Well, the land lied to him."

Search and Rescue team leader Captain Diane Hooper said Shuler was in good condition but "profoundly disoriented." "When we found him, he was certain he was about half a mile from his truck. He was 11 miles away, in the wrong drainage, in the wrong county."

Shuler attributed the navigational error to "the ridgelines all looking the same" and "one wrong turn at a creek that forked where it shouldn't have." He categorically denied being lost.

"Lost means you don't know where you are. I knew exactly where I was. I just didn't know where everything else was."

His wife, Darlene, greeted him with what witnesses described as "a hug followed by a lecture of significant duration."

As of press time, Shuler has been gifted four GPS units, two satellite communicators, and a cell phone battery pack by concerned friends and family. He has declined to use any of them.