These guys had no military training except stuff gleaned from the movies. They were skill-less in real bushcraft. The only way that they made it as long as they did was by breaking into hunter's cabins. It would have been more impressive if they had pulled it off for 3 years instead of 3 weeks. In their escape and short-term evasion they couldn't have pulled any of it off without support from the outside. So if you really want to evade from "the man" you better go to place totally disconnected from you and have plenty of cached tools and supplies to last for years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/nyregi....html?_r=1
When the two men plunged into the unforgiving wilderness of the Adirondacks, they had scant experience and supplies better suited to boys running away from home than to convicted killers fleeing a maximum-security prison: pepperoni sticks, toilet paper, a cache of black pepper, an electric shaver and 40 granola bars, all packed in a cloth guitar case.
But they managed to avoid capture for three weeks in the rugged northernmost reaches of New York State. Navigating by the stars and using evasion tactics gleaned from Vietnam War movies, they pillaged peanut butter and pasta — as well as moonshine and marijuana — from remote hunting cabins. They stole sleep by the hour and tracked their pursuers’ movements via news reports on a purloined transistor radio. In the end, feet worn bloody by flight, they argued and went their separate ways before their bids for freedom ended — one in capture, one in death....
The escape of David Sweat and Richard W. Matt in June 2015 from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y., captivated the nation...But little has been disclosed about what it was actually like for the two hunted men during their 30-mile slog in the deep woods between the prison and the Canadian border.
The survivor, Mr. Sweat, has told their story...to investigators from the New York State Police...in a series of interviews that began from his hospital bed the day he was captured. It is contained in more than 500 pages of transcripts. It is the drama as seen from the vantage point of the hunted, the police and dogs always just one step behind, hopscotching from rural roads to rutted mountainsides, dragging themselves through swamps and up and down steep inclines.
The men cobbled together their supplies from what was available inside the maximum-security prison...amassing a supply of black pepper used to throw dogs off his scent, along with a shaver so they would not look like bearded fugitives.
Much of the time the two men spent cold, wet, shivering nights sleeping on the ground or in elevated hunting blinds...a perch from which ...Sweat said... he could identify the search area by watching helicopters and planes above...
they ...spent...time in rough-hewed cabins used by hunters...in one cabin... they found...a propane heater and an ample supply of food, would allow them to stay for two nights. In another...they found a shotgun, which they took...
“We’d turn the heaters on and we’d cook,” Mr. Sweat recalled. “We made pasta and everything else...The transcripts...reveal Mr. Sweat as an enthusiastic raconteur, eager to regale his questioners with his backwoods accomplishments and his MacGyver-like skills of improvisation. He was also quick to vent his apparent frustration with what he characterized as his sluggish, foolhardy and sometimes drunken fellow escapee, Matt.
The two men found a transistor radio and refrigerator full of beer at another cabin...in addition to helping them keep track of where the authorities were searching for them, the radio also provided some measure of entertainment...
After two weeks, Matt began to wear on him. With their hunters in hot pursuit, Sweat left him behind...
On June 26, a drunken Mr. Matt was confronted by a United States Border Patrol tactical unit, and, the authorities say, pointed a shotgun at one of its members. A federal agent shot him... wo days later, Mr. Sweat was walking on a rural road just a mile and a half from the Canadian border when a sergeant in a State Police car approached him...Sweat started to cross a field of alfalfa, heading for the tree line on the opposite side. The sergeant tried to call Sweat back to the road, saying...But Sweat...and kept walking. He started moving faster. The sergeant swore at him.
“He started running behind me,” Mr. Sweat recalled. “I took off. The next thing he says: ‘I’m going to shoot you. If you don’t stop, I’m going to shoot you...’ Sweat said he held his hands up so the trooper could see he was unarmed, but kept running. The tree line got closer. He dropped the bag he was carrying. The sergeant got down on one knee, carefully set up his shot and fired...
Sweat...pleaded guilty to first-degree escape and promotion of prison contraband. He was later sentenced to three and a half to seven years in prison, on top of his life-without-parole sentence... for the 2002 killing of a Broome County sheriff’s deputy. He is currently in the Special Housing Unit at Five Points Correctional Facility in Romulus, N.Y., the state’s newest maximum-security prison...
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