Thirty-six-year-old Kirk Nielsen couldn’t hold back tears Monday afternoon as he recalled his experience with two friends on Sunday when their boat capsized on Pickerel Lake.

“I would like to thank everyone who helped us,” Nielsen said in an emotional interview with the Tribune. “If anyone didn’t hear us screaming or yelling, we probably wouldn’t have made it.”

Nielsen, along with Daniel Classon, 17, and Levi Gardner, 17, had set out early Sunday morning to hunt ducks.

Nielsen said the group arrived at the island in the middle of Pickerel Lake at 5 a.m. to set up decoys and prepare for their hunt.

Around 7 a.m., they started hunting, shot a few ducks and then went out to retrieve them. They came back and then shot and killed a few more.

Nielsen said at roughly around 8 a.m., things had slowed down, and by 9:30 a.m. the group made the decision to start winding down their trip.

“We really wanted to be off the lake by 11,” he said.

They got everything packed up and loaded into their boat. Nielsen said he remembers calling family around 10 a.m. to tell them they were headed back to shore.

He said he thinks that having two propane heaters and an extra black plastic tote in the boat weighed it down and eventually led to the boat capsizing.

“We knew we were going to have to come back slow,” he said. “We weren’t even trying to go fast.”

Nielsen said he and the others saw a big wave coming in and decided to slow down even more. That’s when the front end of the boat lowered.

“It went straight down like it was submarining,” he said.

As the oldest in the group, Nielsen noted that he tried to stay calm for his friends, who began to panic.

The three had life jackets in the boat but were not wearing them, he said.

He tried to flip the boat back over, and at one point, both of the 17 year olds were on top of the boat. Then, one decided he wanted to try swimming to Pickerel Park.

He did well at first, but then, Nielsen said, he lost sight of him. The other young man also started drifting farther away from him.

“I was pretty much ready to say goodbye,” he said. “I couldn’t feel my hands and legs. I couldn’t move. I was saying goodbye to my wife and my kids and my parents.”

He said to make matters worse, he had sunk down into what he described as “muddy muck” below the water. The water was around shoulder height.

Though his memories after that point are limited, Nielsen said he vaguely remembers seeing a man, later identified as Jeremy Hendrickson of rural Albert Lea, running down from his house, getting a boat and rowing out to where their boat had capsized to try and rescue them. He also vaguely remembers the rescue team with the Albert Lea Fire Department.

Hendrickson rescued one, and the Fire Department rescued two.

Nielsen estimated he was probably in the water for between 30 minutes to an hour.

Each member of the trio was taken to Albert Lea Medical Center for cold exposure-related injuries.

Doctors told Nielsen’s family that his body temperature was down to 90 degrees — normal is 98.6 — and he was in and out of consciousness.

“I didn’t really know what was going on,” he said.

He was packed with hot blankets and a machine that blows out hot air. He was twitching and having muscle cramps, and it took him a long time to get warm, he said.

He thanked Hendrickson, the members of the fire department who helped rescue him and his friends, and the paramedics in the ALMC ambulances who also assisted them.

“It was like having a guardian angel,” he said through tears. “I was ready to say goodbye to everybody.”