A 32-year-old black bear hunter was severely injured Saturday when a brown bear mauled him in a distant space of Alaska. The sufferer, Tyler Johnson, additionally sustained a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the leg when making an attempt to fend off the assault.
Johnson was born and raised in Sterling, Alaska, and only recently relocated to Texas. He instructed In Depth Alaska he was searching black bears along with his father, Chris Johnson, an Alaska Wildlife Trooper and former USFWS officer. The 2 hunters had been climbing the Resurrection Pass Trail within the Kenai Mountains once they startled a brown bear sleeping in some tall grass. It was an space that Tyler had not hunted earlier than.
Three days into their five-day hunt, the Johnsons had been working via some dense brush once they broke right into a clearing full of waist-high grass. They had been climbing quietly so that they wouldn’t spook any recreation within the space.
“I took about 5 steps out of that [grass] and that’s when my dad yelled, ‘Bear!’” Tyler mentioned. “If you happen to’ve ever heard a grizzly, it’s stunning, to say the least. It wasn’t even like a warning growl. It simply did its growl after which sprinted in direction of my dad… It closed on him actual fast. He was yelling on the bear, and the bear placed on its brakes and turned in direction of me.”
Because the bear closed the gap between them, Tyler mentioned he struggled to get his firearm out of the holster on his pack. Due to the stress and pace of the assault, he has solely been capable of piece collectively what occurred.
Tyler Johnson/Fb
“I think the bear tried to paw me, which I don’t bear in mind, however I believe it hit my backpack. I’ve claw marks on the exterior body and on my shoulder. It knocked me sideways, and on the identical time, it gripped into my proper quad. I used to be falling backward right now. It was like getting hit by a prepare.”
Someway Tyler managed to attract his sidearm at about the identical time the bear was on him, however solely after the bear clawed his left shoulder and proper thigh, and bit his proper calf. He believes he shot himself within the left leg as he was flying backward from the affect. The bullet entered his proper quadricep and exited simply above the knee.
“That’s after I put seven rounds into its chest and head space, something that I might actually hit whereas the bear was on prime of me.”
Whereas Tyler was dumping rounds into the bear, his father was taking pictures from a distinct angle, unloading his 10mm Glock 40. Tyler believes his seventh shot should have hit the bear both within the head or the backbone as a result of he mentioned he remembers seeing the animal change from a pissed-off bear to at least one that was falling over. After he crawled away from the animal, his father completed it off with a remaining spherical.
The 2 males instantly went into triage mode, assessing and caring for Tyler’s accidents.
“I look down on my leg. I’ve a bullet gap, so I take my backpack off,” Tyler mentioned. “I deliver a trauma kit with me wherever we go searching.”
He dressed the bullet wound with QuickClot held in place with an elastic slingshot band. That’s when Tyler mentioned he observed that his different boot was torn aside and filling up shortly with blood.
“There have been a number of bullets flying from my barrel in a frantic manner. I didn’t know if I hit myself a second time,” he mentioned. (It seems that damage was a direct wound from the bear, which ripped open his calf and precipitated heavy bleeding.)
The 2 males utilized a tourniquet to Tyler’s leg and tied a bandanna round a gash on his thigh. Then Chris used his Garmin InReach to name for assist. Alaska Wildlife Troopers acquired the decision at 3 p.m., in response to a dispatch report. It took greater than an hour for rescuers to reach. Whereas ready for the helicopter, Tyler mentioned his dad made him inform searching tales to assist maintain him awake and his thoughts off of the ache.
“The tourniquet damage,” Tyler mentioned. “It felt just like the bear was nonetheless chewing on my leg.”
Tyler was airlifted to Anchorage and acquired remedy at Alaska Medical Heart, in response to the Anchorage Daily News, and was launched from the hospital that night.
Learn Subsequent: The Best Bear Defense Handguns of 2024
Tyler has a principle of why the bear stopped the cost at his father and attacked him as a substitute. He believes the bear was simply making an attempt to get out of the clearing.
“Sadly for me and the bear, I used to be between it and escape. So at that second, for the bear, it was trapped, and I used to be in the way in which.”
Previous to this encounter, there have been two reported grizzly bear assaults within the U.S. this 12 months. The newest assault occurred in July when a 72-year-old was charged by a sow while picking huckleberries in Flathead Nationwide Forest. In Could, a man was mauled by a sow defending her cub in Grand Teton Nationwide Park. He sustained accidents to his leg, again, and hand and spent a number of days within the hospital.
