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A bear entered a home in Steamboat at 2 a.m. Saturday. Kelly Mauldin heard her dogs barking and got up to investigate and discovered the 300-400 male bear in her house. She screamed for her husband, Ken, who got up and shot and killed the bear. When I went to my bedroom door, I saw the bear about 10 feet away and shot it instantly with a 40-caliber, semi-automatic handgun. Then the bear charged me. I continued shooting at it as fast as I could. The bullet hole in the floor suggested the bear got about five to six feet...

Image of Old Groaner's skull from the front. The bear's left eye arch is intact. Thanks to Hayley Chambers of the Ketchikan Museums for pictures of Old Groaner's skull.In the first three segments of this series, the formation of the myth of Old Groaner was discussed.In segment I, the original article, published in February of 1936, almost certainly written less than two months after Old Groaner was killed, is detailed. Old Groaner was killed in November of 1935. It takes time to put a paper magazine together and to print it, especially in 1936.In segment II, the 1953 re-write and...

The original illustration by F.W Gabler was changed for the 1953 and 1986 re-writes of the article.This is the part III in a series of four segments on the Old Groaner legend.In segment I, the original article, published in the February 1936 issue of Alaska Sportsman is examined.In segment II, the 1953 re-write and some of the major changes in the rewrite are examined.We may never know why the many changes were made to the Old Groaner story when it was re-written by W.H. "Handlogger" Jackson and published in the March issue of the 1953 Alaskan Sportsman as "The Moaning...

Part I. The events which started the storyIn early November 1935, at the upper reaches of the Unuk river in Southeastern Alaska, prospector, trapper, and logger, Bruce Johnstone, shot a near-world record grizzly bear in self-defense. The bear had been shot in the head previously but had survived and healed, leaving the skull deformed and the bear blind on the right side.The skull was brought back to Ketchikan. The story was published in the February 1936 issue of the struggling Alaska Sportsman, written by F. W. Gabler. Gabler interviewed the shooter, Bruce Johnstone. Both Johnstone and Gabler were longtime residents...

Scene five hours after Leah Lokan was Killed by Grizzly Bear in Ovando, MTIn the early morning hours of July 6, 2021, in the village of Ovando, Montana, mere feet from several buildings, Leah Lokan was attacked by a 417 pound grizzly bear. She valiantly used bear spray in an attempt to stop the attack. The bear spray failed. Ms Lokan was a small but strong woman. She was killed in the unprovoked predatory attack. Leah Lokan as remembered by a friend.Leah Lokan facebook image link While not the first bear spray fatality in 2021, the attack and defensive failure...

On August 13, 1977, Cynthia Dusel-Bacon was working for her third summer as a geologist for the Alaskan branch of the United States Geological Survey. She was 30 years old and in excellent physical condition. She was field mapping, doing helicopter-assisted traverses of the Big Delta quadrangle. She had a geologist’s hammer, a walkie-talkie radio, and a rucksack with lunch, which she also used to stow rock samples she collected. The project chief believed “guns added more danger to an encounter than they would prevent”. Her views became policy on the project.Cynthia later said, in a taped interview for Larry...

A little before 11 p.m. on Friday, May 20, a wife and mother looked outside her rural home on Castle rd. near Medford, Wisconsin, in Taylor County. A bear was eating the bird feed from their bird feeder. She partly opened a window and yelled at the bear to go away. The bear disputed her position as owner. From wqow.com: According to the Taylor County Sheriff’s Office, authorities received a report of a bear attack at a home on Castle Road in the Township of Medford Friday around 11 p.m.In a press release, authorities report a husband and wife noticed...

<p>MEDFORD, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin couple say they killed a bear that attacked them inside their home after they spotted it eating from their bird feeder.</p><p>The Taylor County Sheriff’s office said the attack happened around 11 p.m. Friday at a home near Medford in north-central Wisconsin. The couple told authorities that the bear charged through a window after they yelled at it to go away.</p>

The 12-year-old was sleeping under the stars with his buddies when the bear jolted everyone awake "Be Prepared" may be the motto for the Boy Scouts, but a 12-year-old from New York was anything but prepared for the encounter he had while on a recent camping trip -- one that saw his leg end up in the jaws of a black bear. The uninvited guest was peaking around a campsite late at night at Harriman State Park in Rockland and Orange counties, in search of some human food, when it stumbled on a group of Boy Scouts from Cooperstown. "It...

I have been researching the effectiveness of pistols when they are fired as a defense against bears for several years. The research started as an attempt to find cases where pistols were ineffective. In October of 2016, a poster on freerepublic.com claimed (post 28 at the link) that there were numerous failures when people attempted to use pistols as a defensive tool against bears. The author knew there were several cases where the use of a pistol resulted in an effective defense. Because access to handguns, bear spray, knives, rifles, and shotguns all involve similar problems, only cases where a...

These eleven events of pistols fired in defense against bears, in combination with other items, have been found since the last update in June of 2021. The increasing number of incidents had made checking all links difficult and awkward.With this article, and in the future, updates will consist of the newly revealed incidents and any change in statistics. In this article eleven newly revealed cases of combination defenses are added for completeness. In our research of the effectiveness of pistol fired in defense against bears, we include all documented incidents, so readers may evaluate them themselves.Because these incidents involve more...

Grizzly bear downed at 10 feet by Jimmy Cox with a 10mm pistolU.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- – The 10mm pistol caliber is gaining supporters as a suitable pistol caliber for defense against bears.The caliber has long been known as an excellent pistol hunting cartridge. In this correspondent’s study of the use of pistols in defense, eight cases have been discovered where 10 mm pistols were used to defend against bear attacks. Six of those cases were with the 10 mm only. One case was in combination with a .340 Weatherby magnum rifle, and one case was in combination with a .45...

Handloggers is the biography of Alaskan pioneer W. H. (Handlogger) Jackson and his wife Ruth Jackson, nee Ruth Johnstone. 251 pages, 1974, softcover. Jackson moved into Alaska about 1917-18, prospecting, handlogging, and trapping. He was born about 1883-84 in California when the fastest transport was a steam engine train. Most of his travels before 1920 were on foot, horseback, or by steamship. He married in 1927 and died in 1970. During his long outdoors career, he developed an outstanding reputation for skill and fair dealing. On page 225, Handlogger writes of the unprovoked black bear attack he foiled with a...

This is another in a series of self-defense against bear events uncovered in a Freedom of Information Act request done by AmmoLand. It seems they have not been published before. At about 10 a.m. on the morning of May 28, 2016, a father-son pair of shed antler collectors were searching for antlers in the Bear Creek drainage of the Shoshone National Forest, about 16 miles northeast of Dubois, Wyoming.The father and son had separated. The father went up a draw, and the son went up a side hill to a flat bench. The son had reached the top of the...

This article is part of a continuing series of defensive bear shootings discovered through a Freedom of Information Act request by AmmoLand. It appears these events were not reported in other media. On September 13, 2011, two bowhunters were hunting for elk in a wild part of Wyoming, on the boundary of the Shoshone National Forest and the Bridger Teton National Forest. The location was on the Continental Divide between the Salt Creek and the South Fork of the Fish Creek drainages, about an hour north of DuNoir Junction, southwest of Dubois, Wyoming, near the boundary of Fremont County and...

This is another in a series of self-defense against bear events uncovered in a Freedom of Information Act request done by AmmoLand. It seems they have not been published before. On October 18, 2010, an elk hunter was successful in collecting a bull elk at the head of the North Crandall Creek drainage in Wyoming. It was late in the day, so they field-dressed the elk, moved the gut pile about 50 yards away, and left the elk to be retrieved the next day, with horses.On October 19, 2010, three men were on their way to retrieve the elk. Because...

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- The first recorded fatal polar bear attack in the United States happened in 1885, near Cape Thompson, Alaska. It was unlikely to have happened any earlier because there weren’t any polar bears in United States territory until the USA acquired Alaska from Russia, which was formally transferred to the USA on October 18, 1867.There were probably many fatal polar bear attacks before then, but they happened to stone-age people without the ability to record them or publish them. There is not much overlap between the habitat of people living in the far North of Alaska and polar bears....

On April 15, 2021, Carl Mock was attacked by a grizzly bear, just outside of Yellowstone Park. Mock was an accomplished woodsman and guide. He did not have a firearm with him. He had bear spray. He used the bear spray but was fatally injured.irected to Montana Fish and Wildlife Morgan Jacobsen, was able to determine bear spray had been used in the incident. Initially, the use of bear spray was reported as unknown by ktla.com: Mock when attacked had bear spray — a Mace-like deterrent meant to protect against attacks — but officials said they did not know if...

A man was riding his bicycle along a riverbed in Alaska on Tuesday, when police said he was mauled by a brown bear. As he was riding his bike in Cantwell, Alaska, the man, who police didn't identify, said he saw the bear running towards him from 10-15 yards away. He got off of his bicycle and started yelling at the bear. "Just prior to the bear making contact, the victim fell to the ground and onto his back, covered his head and believes he kicked at the bear, ... The victim estimated that the bear weighed 500 pounds and...

This is one of a series of detailed accounts of bear attacks found with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by AmmoLand. On September 7, 2010, a pair of archery hunters were stalking moose in a remote part of Wyoming near Pinedale. A large boar grizzly bear attacked them. Fortunately, they were able to shoot the bear and stop the attack. In the morning, one of their guides had been scouting the area. He had seen two bull moose and what he thought was a large black bear. When he told the hunters about the moose and the bear, the...