Alaska Man Survives After Being Ambushed By Alaska Brown Bear

Illustration of a bear in the wild. (Elizabeth/Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Allen Minish never expected a brief 10-second encounter with a large brown bear, leaving him seriously injured.

His jaw was shattered, a deep puncture wound in the scalp so doctors said he could see his bones, tears and many stitches that led him to have to undergo surgery for 4 1/2 hours which had made doctors worried about his condition.

"I saw him and he saw me at the same time, and it was scary," he said as he told the Korea Times from the AP, Thursday, May 20, from the hospital the day after the abuse.

It all started with a very short encounter, he said, of just 10 seconds, when he surprised a brown bear on Tuesday morning near the Richardson Highway in Gulkana, located about 190 miles northeast of Anchorage, Alaska.

At the time he was observing the land for a real estate agent in a wooded, remote area of Alaska, putting some numbers into his GPS unit when he looked up and saw a large brown bear walking about 30 feet away.

Illustration of a bear. (Joshua J. Cotten/Unsplash)

In just a moment, the big bear ambushed him. Minish tries to hide behind a fir tree, but the bear is able to find it. When trying to keep the bear away with the observation pole used, the bear lightly dropped the pole, while also dropping the Minish.

As he lunged above, I grabbed his lower jaw to pull him away. But he threw me there, grabbed a quarter of my face," he said, noting that he had a stab wound to the hand.

He bites small then he bites the second and the second bite is the one that breaks the bone. Crushed my right cheek," he added.

As the bear releases him, Minish turns to the ground and puts his hands on his head. And then the bear just walked away.

He suspects the bear is gone because he no longer considers Minish a threat. For a moment he tried to pay attention to his condition.

"I realized I was in a very bad condition because I had all this blood everywhere," she said.

He called 911 on his cell phone. As he spoke to the dispatcher, he took off his surveyor vest and T-shirt to wrap his head around so that blood wouldn't keep flowing.

Before help arrived, he feared the bear would return to finish him off.

"I kept hearing things, but every time I tried to lean around to look around, I became dizzy from losing blood. The bear didn't come back, so I just lay there and worried about it," she said.

Then he waited 59 minutes for help to come. She knew how long it would take, as she then checked her mobile phone records for how long she was told to stay on the phone with the operator until the rescue arrived.

Illustration of a bear. (Richard Lee/Unsplash)

At one point, he was able to give the operator the exact coordinates of his GPS unit, but it was also difficult.

"It took me a while to give them that because I had so much blood flowing into my eyes and into the GPS, I kept having to erase everything," Minish recalls.

He said one of the rescuers called him a hero after seeing how much blood was on the ground. The evacuation process was not easy. Rescue teams had to help him walk a quarter-mile through swamps, shrubs and trees. From there, he was taken to a nearby airport and flown to Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage by medical helicopter.

From this event, Minish, who has 40 years of experience living in Alaska, side by side with a bear in his survey and engineering business that takes him into the wild.

"One lesson learned, I should have someone or something with me. My gun lives in the car. I think I feel lucky," he concluded.