Bear Attack!

“Man!
If I was attacked by a bear - I'd CRAP!”

“if I was attacked by a bear - you'd crap, too!”

“If the bear ate you - he'd crap too (eventually)!”

“If your were attacked by bear crap we would all crap.”

“I once saw someone attack bear crap.”

“Was the bear crap in the woods?”

“gojo, did you go see the bears, at the zoo, this weekend?”

“...or was it just bad dreams?”

“Neither.

I saw a snippet on a tv show (the goofy guy) from AK.

There were bears EVERYWHERE!
brrrrrr!


(hold me...)”

“get yer hand off my butt, 'jo!

here, take your teddy bear amd go to bed.

rarr! LOL!!!!”

“AWE! Teddy bear crap!!”

“oh the sensationalism! Please save me”

“How much crap can a big bear crap

a big bear
big bear
big
crap crap”

“pop tarts?!”

“See if I ever take Pop Tarts in the woods again.”

“Biz, hang food and cook 100-200 yards from tent. change clothes before getting into tent.

I usually ditch my sleeping stuff, hike up trail to cook and hang food, so its on my way the next AM.”

“Buy a bear canister and let em play kick ball with it outside the tent.”

“heh

yah-change clothes outside the tent

So the spy satellites can see me!!”

“Bear crap attacked my boot once...had a heck of a time shaking it loose.”

“ew, I didn't even think about that-gross”

“RE: Changing outside the tent? You got a point there. Spy satelites are probably outfitted with IR, too, so changing in the dark wouldn't work either.

WW, this is the closest I have been:

Close Call”

“try that again, for biz:

Close Call”

“Can the satellites track bears?
If so, is there a handheld (ala GPS) unit that one could use to know where the bears are - and ARE NOT?”

“yeah, gojo.

i've got a special GPS to sell you, for only $7,999.99!”

“There's a bear out there!”

“I don't know what's worse

being attacked by a bear or being stalked by those goddammed KBG voyeurs!

screw Russia! I've had it with them!”

“Stahlin, Gorbechoff and all the rest of those communist goddammed bastards!!

They rank up there with Granolas in my book!!”

“oh, you're gonna LOVE tom terrific!”

“TT? where are ya?”

“Suddenly, a bear attack seems trivial...”

“Our PNW trip 2001 is going to take place in bear territory. I'm hoping to see bears from a safe distance.

I have kept my cool in the worst of circumstances, but if I was confronted by a bear, I think I would totally lose it and jump into a bush or down the mountainside, and then I'd play dead if I wasn't already dead.”

“I've encountered one bear in the backcountry - a griz. Idaho.

It was quite exhillerating!”

“Alaskan Hunter Lucky to Be Alive After Bear Attack on Frigid Island

Tuesday, December 11, 2001


BY KATHY DYE
SCRIPPS-McCLATCHY

JUNEAU, Alaska -- Kenneth Horton will spend months recovering from wounds inflicted in five seconds by a grizzly bear on Admiralty Island.

But the 52-year-old Juneau man carries no grudge against the sow that mauled him to protect her cub.

"I have no hard feelings at all against that bear. It was naturally protecting its baby," Horton said from a Seattle hospital where he is recovering. "I'm just thankful she didn't kill me 'cause she sure could have."

Horton was hunting deer on the northeast end of the island Wednesday when he was attacked. He was walking down a bluff on a game trail thick with blueberry brush. When he got to the bottom he saw a 600-pound sow and a cub nearly as big as its mother. The bears saw him, too.

Horton estimated he was about 30 feet away.

"I knew I was in trouble 'cause she didn't look happy," he said. "She immediately took off running right at me, just charged me hard and quick. She was on me in a heartbeat, ears back and low to the ground and coming full bore."

The brown bear swatted him on the left side of his face, crushing his cheekbone and tearing out the nerves, he said. Horton fell to the ground and turned on his stomach, covering the back of his neck with his hands.

"She was ferociously attacking me, biting the back of my neck, swatting me and chewing on the back of my head," he said.

"She was growling as bones were crunching in the back of my head . . . she was tearing me up good. Pieces of my face were flying off. I was getting killed."

After five seconds, "I went 'OK, OK, OK,' and she got off me."

Horton said the bear walked about 10 feet, then stopped and looked back.

"I looked at her too. I guess she realized I was hurt bad enough that I was no danger anymore," he said.

The bears disappeared into the forest, leaving Horton to tend severe wounds.

"I was holding half my face in my hand," he said. "I pulled out a bandana in my daypack, put my face back together and wrapped a bandana around it."

Horton had a radio. He managed to contact the U.S. Coast Guard and gave them a rough idea of his location. Then he waited near a beach for help.

"It was in the teens and blowing snow. I thought they better come get me quick," he said. "I felt like I could die."

Two pilots with Coastal Helicopters joined in the rescue and found him within 20 minutes, said Horton, who was flown to Bartlett Regional Hospital and later to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

Horton said his shoulder, face and head were "all mangled" in the attack. Doctors on Thursday sutured bite holes on the back of his head and repaired nerves "ripped out" under his left cheekbone, he said.

"I can't smile too good on that side right now," he said several hours after surgery.

Horton said he will probably stay in the hospital for several days then return to Juneau, where he worked most recently as a rock crusher for Juneau Ready Mix. He still needs reconstructive surgery to repair the damage to his cheekbone.

Horton's longtime girlfriend, Helen Mielke, said she was stunned when she first saw Horton's wounds and considers him lucky to be alive.

"What's done is done. Now it's getting him healed up and getting him back home," said Mielke from Seattle. "He's going to have some scars."

Then after a pause, "He'll have some war stories," she said.”

“Man that is nutz.That guy is luckey to be alive.”

“I have a good answer to that, its called a .45.”

“What was he hunting with? His cack in his hand??? Even a bow and arrow may have scared the bear way, and if he had a .22, most peopel don't hunt with a bolt action .22 any more. He must have had a clip fed gun. WHY DIDN'T HE SHOOT?????/”

“I figured it out, he must be one of those green peace bleeding heart libs, that want to take all of our guns way.

Funny, bleeding heart lib, but I guess it was his face.”

“I see it this way in black bear country I carry bear spray in griz country well .45 sounds like a good idea.....”

“Iluv,

For bear spray to work it the beast has to be close. If the bear is running at me I would like to have it run away before it his with in spreying range.”

“Hell, it may even run away from the sound of the gun. You may not even have to shoot it. Just fire 1 rd into a tree or something.”

“Ok you make a good point....”

“Someone finally conducted a test with bear spray. The bear liked it. I believe it was a black bear.”

“Treebait, I'll conduct a test with my HK Mark 23 .45call with a bear, but I think we all know what the out come would be.”

“Tea, before you gloat too much in your dissing of this poor guy, do you know anything about guns? Do you have any idea how tough grizzly hides are, backed by a dense muscle mass, let alone the thickness of their skulls?

1. A grizzly bolting at you from 30 feet will most likely be on you before you can raise the rifle, especially when you are suprised and frightened.

2. Even if you can raise it, a deer rifle, even a powerful one by deer hunting standards, won't be much threat to a 600-pound grizzly unless the shot is exceptionally accurate and lucky. One in many millions lucky when you are trying to get it on a target that is rushing you like an Olympic sprinter on steroids. From 30 feet, even if you did hit it AND mortally wound it, its momentum would probably carry it's 600-pound mass on top of you so you could enjoy its death throes from underneath. Heck, a human with a knife can be 21 feet away and get to you before you can draw a pistol from a holster. And even if you get a gun up and shoot the person, they have closed the distance enough to stab you. It's been tested by defensive shooting experts. So the much tougher and faster and more powerful bear had the jump here, even spotting the human an extra 9 feet.

3. Which brings up the .45. If you mean a .45 ACP pistol round, it wouldn't do anything but make the bear madder if you hit it. Make it, if I remember correctly, a .45-70 rifle round with the specially hardened bullets designed for grizzly or other dangerous game hunting, and then you've got something. But you still have to make the shot, and that just wasn't going to happen in that small time/distance equation.

If you hunt on Admiralty Island or any similar places in Alaska, you have to be aware of bears at all times. The guy knows he made the mistake, not the bear. Bet he wears bear bells from now on, deer hunting or not.”

“I don't know about that.I you have the nerve if the bear is at 20 ft and you aim for the head I sorry the bear is dead....Or in bad shape...”

“Read the other thread about the guy that got the bear. Then let us all know how easy you think it would be.”

“At that range, bear spray into it's eyes is more effective than a gunshot.”

“Note that the incident recounted in the Bear Stories thread involves a large BLACK bear. This bear was not charging and the humans were the ones with the jump on it, ambushing it as it came out of the cabin. The first shot was from the side, at least somewhat, to go through shoulder and lungs. Even with the second shot (presumably 12-gauge magnum slugs, since the shooters seemed to be ready for bear trouble around their cabis), it went 100 feet before dropping.

With the grizzly on Admiralty Island, any shot would have been front on (that skull is extremely thick) and closing not just fast but NOW. A bigger, tougher, faster, angrier in this case, adversary. The guy was screwed from the moment mama griz decided to attack rather than run, which was a millisecond.

Even getting your bear spray into play would have been difficult if it wasn't already in your hand. If it was in a belt holster and you had to release the safety (especially if you hadn't practiced a number of times under stressful conditions) and then aim, it wouldn't be much hope, I'm afraid.”

“I really think that this guy did about all that was possible in the situation. He played helpless, covered his head and neck, and prayed that she would stop.”

“You might be right.”