Summary based on the NamUs case record (can2006022099) and
1 other sourceContemporary reporting identified Duane Vergil Wicklund as a 40-year-old male when he disappeared on October 7, 1967, while on Sturgeon Lake in northwestern Ontario, approximately 45 miles north of Ignace. Wicklund was an American visitor from Minnesota who had traveled into the remote lake country for a moose-hunting trip. He was accompanied by another American hunter identified in contemporary records as Edward K. Kotula. The two men went out onto Sturgeon Lake by boat and never returned.
What began as a wilderness hunting excursion quickly became an emergency when neither man could be accounted for and there was no indication that they had safely reached shore.
The circumstances discovered during the following days strongly suggested a boating accident. Contemporary newspaper coverage reported that the hunters' boat had been carrying a load of moose when it apparently overturned on the lake. The vessel itself was located on Tuesday, October 10, three days after Wicklund and Kotula had disappeared, but neither man was found with it. The discovery of the empty boat gave searchers a disturbing indication of what had likely happened and concentrated the effort on the water. By October 11, authorities were conducting dragging operations on Sturgeon Lake in an attempt to recover the missing men, and the contemporary account described them as apparently having drowned. Despite the recovery of the boat and the intensive effort that followed, the historical reporting did not document the recovery of Wicklund or Kotula.
Later missing-person records continued to describe Wicklund's disappearance as a suspected accident and likewise reported that he was presumed to have drowned. One surviving online profile describes him as having grey hair and a beard, a heavy build, a dark complexion, and a distinctive scar extending from his nose toward his upper lip. It lists him as approximately 5 feet 6 inches tall and 190 pounds and reports that he was wearing a red jacket. Although some modern records contain inconsistencies in names and biographical details, they agree on the essential circumstances: Wicklund disappeared on Sturgeon Lake on October 7, 1967, during a boating trip with another man, and the case became associated with an apparent drowning after their boat was discovered without them.
More than half a century later, the available records still preserve the haunting outline of a trip from which two hunters never came home. There is a known date, a known lake, a recovered boat, and a contemporary search that treated the incident as a likely fatal accident, yet there is no documented recovery of Wicklund in the sources available online. His disappearance therefore remains tied to the waters of Sturgeon Lake and to the unanswered question of precisely what occurred after the men set out that October day. In overview, Duane Vergil Wicklund vanished during a 1967 moose-hunting excursion on Sturgeon Lake; his overturned boat was subsequently found, police searched the lake for him and his companion, and the evidence led authorities and later case records to presume that he drowned, even though his remains were not documented as having been recovered.Last Seen: Oct 7, 1967
