Posted on 12/02/2007 9:24:01 AM PST by george76
Juneau man recounts Friday morning bear attack on Admiralty Island .
A "crack" in the brush. A split second to turn and see the bear. Another second to click the gun's safety off.
That's all the time Dr. John Raster had before the brown bear attacked him.
"I screamed and fired a shot into the air," he said. "It was already on me and the gun was still pretty much slung around my shoulder. He bit me and started scratching me and pushed me down into the water."
The Juneau doctor had been walking alone Friday morning along a stretch of beach on Admiralty Island, just a few hundreds yards from a cabin where he stayed with a hunting party.
"I thought it was my neck," he said. "I thought I was going to die ... I was afraid it was going to eat me and drag me into the woods."
He may have lost consciousness or been stunned, but a few minutes passed before he realized he was soaked through and cold.
Thursday night they heard a bear outside the cabin popping its teeth and breaking branches...
Friday afternoon, they packed up and took a floatplane back to Juneau.
(Excerpt) Read more at juneauempire.com ...
/s
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Lemme guess - the air was not what was attacking him.
popping its teeth?
This guy fired into the air, too ?
Authorities believe a Calgary hunter killed by a grizzly near Sundre went down fighting, firing his weapon before dying.
An autopsy conducted on Don Peters, 51, of Calgary, yesterday confirmed the city hunter died as a result of a grizzly bear attack and an investigation at the scene concluded Peters fired his hunting rifle before being killed, said RCMP Sgt. Patrick Webb.
http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Alberta/2007/11/30/4696926-sun.html
The article didn't mention that the good doctor was wearing bells or was armed with the lethal pepper spray.
Needs more range time, or get his sights aligned properly.
Seriously, what a jerk.
or get his sights removed so it will not hurt so much for when the bear...
Things happen so quickly. Usually the bear charges out of nearby cover. We’ve had several incidents this hunting season in NW Montana.
In one the hunter fired his rifle from the hip and the 600 lb Grizzly passed to his side. Afterwards he found a deer carcass the bear had been feeding on. The next day the carcass had been moved and buried in another location.
In another incident a mountain lion jumped on a hunter’s back. He dropped his rifle, but managed to get a shot off with his pistol, which was enough to scare the cat off.
In another instance a hunter was taking a dump, when a Grizzly came out of the brush, knocked him over and held him down. He couldn’t get his 44 out of the holster because his belt was loose. The bear released him and left.
In another instance a Grizzly charged 2 hunters, who deterred it with pepper spray. The bear came back for another go and they shot it.
Yup. Forensics would be working with the proctologist.
They said “no mom we were crying because the bear was so stinky”.
Warning shots into the air at such a close range is not good.
I lived in Alaska for more than 30 years, including Juneau. A well known and often used joke said to persons depending on a handgun for bear protection was “Good choice, you’ll be able to stick it in your mouth and kill yourself before the bear reaches you.”
“It was already on me and the gun was still pretty much slung around my shoulder.”
Superman could twirl around in a phone booth while changing clothes.
The rest of us are a bit slower.
A bear can cover 20 yards in less than two seconds - with his camera in hand and rifle slung over his shoulder, he surprisingly was able to fire a shot. I lived in Juneau for 24 years and know this doc from a few appointments with him - nice guy, good physician. We hunted the Seymour
Canal area many times and there are plenty of brown bears -this one could have had a deer carcass nearby, which are in short supply after last winter’s devastating snowfall (16 feet plus) which shrank the Sitka blacktail population in a big way.
lOL.....ah great children stories.....”Look mom! This is the dogs paw! Can we hang it from the mirror??”
City liberals often say...He should have had his little brass bells to warn the bear.
Peters was out hunting big game over the weekend in a heavily wooded area near Mount-Aire Lodge west of Sundre, about 90 km northwest of Calgary, when he failed to return home on Sunday afternoon.
He was found Wednesday after an intensive three-day search.
Signs at the scene show Peters was likely killed Sunday but that the hunter, despite having fired his high-powered rifle before the attack, likely didn’t hit the bruin that killed him, said Alberta Sustainable Resource Development spokesman Dave Ealey.
“There is no evidence of a blood trail from the bear, or any other signs that the bear is wounded,”
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