Posted on 07/25/2011 4:55:29 PM PDT by Titus-Maximus
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - As the grizzly furiously thrashed him about in the Alaska wilderness, all Sam Gottsegen could think about was what he would miss: college, traveling, life.
"I thought: `I'm going to die,'" the 17-year-old Denver resident said. "I thought, `This just can't be happening to me.'"
Then the bear left, only to return a moment later to continue mailing him and his other teenage friends. When the minute-long attack ended, four teens, including Gottsegen, were injured. Three others were unhurt.
The attack Saturday night in the Talkeetna Mountains north of Anchorage came as the group was nearing the end of a 30-day course to learn how to survive in the backcountry. The teens were at the stage of the course where they could try out their skills without adults around.
Authorities believe the bear was aggressive because it was with its cub. Gottsegen said no one ever saw a cub.
The group was hiking through bushes that got so thick they decided to wade through a river, walking in single file. Around a bend in the river, Joshua Berg, 17, of New City, N.Y., began yelling "Bear! Bear!"
The bear took him down first. The animal made angry, snarling noises as it attacked, Gottsegen told The Associated Press from his hospital bed in Anchorage, recounting the attack.
It was so sudden. There was no time to pull out their bear deterrent spray and no one had a gun. Berg, badly wounded, called for someone to set off the personal locator beacon they carried for emergencies.
Gottsegen said everyone scattered and he ran, even though the students had been told to play dead.
His instincts wouldn't let him, though.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
A couple of .44 magnums could have turned the tide.
The bear continued “mailing” him..........
I guess a lesson was learned! Sad that two young men are in critical condition.
Is it wrong to find some sic humor in that statement?
Doesn't sound like their "survival" training did them much good..... (((ping)))
I bet Palin would have been packin’.
A .45 do any good? Going to the Tetons. Wondering if a .45 is enough.
"You've got maul..."
Yes, that sentence elicited an involuntary laugh from me. As though a bear deterrent spray would do anything against an angry grizz!
people never learn....
bears are wild animals....they are unpredictable...they will defend themselves and their cubs from everyone including larger male bears...
Standard frickin' excuse as if it is ok to be killed by a bear if there is a cub around. No one saw a frickin cub but that doesn't matter the "authorities" will use this excuse as often as they can get away with it, as if Grizzlies have never attacked unprovoked before.
Not one of the kids molested a cub but the Grizzly attacked anyway. Grizzlies are known to attack for no reason at all, cubs or no, simply because they feel like it.
Soon, there will be FReepers commenting that the kids deserved it because they were in the bear's territory, as if humans have no right to the woods.
The bear pepper spray works pretty well, but it has to be kept handy.
A handgun is a poor choice in a sudden attack. Even a .44 Mag requires several well-placed shots to put down a Grizzly.
A shotgun with 00 still probably won’t get it done, either. You need some slugs in there. Bears have very thick skin.
If the bear is far enough away (and they run fast), a rifle is the best choice.
Ping
Not a bird ping
.45 is the absolute bare (no pun intended) minimum, but not a good choice unless you are an expert shot while crapping your pants because an 800 lb. Grizzly is running at you.
Get some bear spray and some 30.06
LoL! Thanks, I'm not the only one then.
As though a bear deterrent spray would do anything against an angry grizz!
Oh, it would do something...piss it off....
Kids definitely didn’t deserve it, but they should have prepared for it.
They were in Grizzly territory.
How many learned this lesson, I wonder?
"Don't go into grizzly country without a grizzly gun."
not for me, it wouldn’t be
“I was looking for an adventure,” said Samuel Gottsegen, the Denver teenager who survived a grizzly bear attack in the Alaska this weekend. His adventure came with bite marks in his head and a pierced lung.
Gottsegen, 17, took part in the National Outdoor Leadership School student expedition with 13 other students and three instructors. On the last leg of the trip, seven students remained in what NOLS spokesperson Bruce Palmer describes as a “self-sufficiency field base experience.”
http://abcnews.go.com/US/grizzly-bear-attack-survivor-describes-alaskan-ordeal/t/story?id=14152757
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