00:00:00 Speaker 1: Oh hey everybody, Episode nine five, coming right at you, Phil and I are here in Bozeman, Montana now this episode. I guess I grew up on an older road, a pedal to the medals. I always did what I told until I found out that my brand new closed a game second hand from the rich kids next door. And I grew up Bath. I guess I grew up me. There are a thousand things inside of my head I wish I ain't seen, and now I just wanted through a real bad dream of being in like I'm coming apart of the scenes. But thank you, Jack Daniel. Welcome everybody to the Hunting Still in Santa Hello Steven, Hello Steve. Oh hello everybody. It's the Hunting Collective coming at you right Phil, episode volume three. We are we're talking about what are we gonna do? For episode one? Phil? What are we gonna do? I have no idea. I suggested we record your the live birth of your second child, and then we just hear that unedited, unedited the live birth. What do you think? It sounds like a great idea. Okay, I don't think you have to run a bit. Can we do it here in the studio? Uh? I don't know that's true. Yeah, that's true. That's gonna be that's important. That's something you need really need to know it's sanitary enough. Yeah, that's fine. Uh, the child will be born. Uh, probably right about now. I mean recording this prior to that happening, but this is gonna be pretty close to the time of the child's arrival. Actually, my wife's calling. Let me pick that up. Make sure she's not to happen the baby right now? Yes, honey, are you not having the baby? Are you? Okay? I like I like that you always think I will see you always answers though, Okay, we're doing a podcast. I'll just call you right back. Okay, Okay, how long do you think? Well, probably minutes. Can I just ask you one question or I can't. Yeah, you're on the podcast right now, So we asked the way. Okay, I'm a daddy, Hello son. Basically I don't I don't have Christmas lights that work for the tree, So I can go to Target now and we can have that as an activity tonight, which means he doesn't nap or would you rather wait till tomorrow and have him napkin case you can come home? Really? Uh, nap nap Okay, okay, love you as a look behind the curtain field. Wow, what it's like to live my life some real dad ship. Did anybody Did anybody catch the email that little bit? Anyway, this is an episode or episode volume three of the Best of I'm really excited to bring it to you, um here in the middle of January when I'm supposedly right now off rearing my child. And so hopefully if that happens, Phil will will put something in here to announce it in this episode. It might happen next episode. You never know. There's a lot of a lot of suspense around that that occurrence. But my wife's my wife's first appearance, and we will I always like to make sure my kids have naps, right Phil, It's very important. It's important to happen naps. I don't know why we don't take more naps. I have been thinking about this a lot recently. Hunting is a real big nap time activity, turkey hunting especial. I'm definitely taking up hunting. Then, Yeah, when you take up turkey hunting this spring with me, we will take naps. It's just gonna be an excuse to take naps. For a couple of days. We're definitely gonna take now. Um, so this this best of it's kind of started. It started poorly, I know, I understand, but if you're just gonna get better. It's all about bear attacks, Phil, and we love bear attacks here um at the hunting collect event also, uh, in the hunting community, bear attacks seem to get more attention than just about anything. It's hard to really know why. I mean, we have a lot of inferences that were drawn to these animals, were drawn to the predatory instincts. It's also really compelling when you're battling against a great beast, right, Phil, I wouldn't know, Um, what would you do if you ran into a grizzly bear? What's this tactic you're gonna try? Some like Star Wars type of moving? Not at all. No. I would go for the bear spray, and if that didn't work, I think i'd do that. I mean I'd probably do the cover my neck and roll two balls. So you're supposed to think if they either say, make a lot of noise and look large or curl up into a ball, which one are you going with? Probably the ball? I don't think, I mean that's probably that's not the right thing, right, Um, Listen, I don't with the right thing is You'll you'll learn from this podcast that there's a lot of ideas about what you should do. There's a lot of ideas about, um, what you need to do, But when it gets when it actually happens, it's so frantic that it that doesn't often occur the way that you think. That's pretty obvious. But um, we have today. We have Todd Or he's probably the most famous of the bare attack victims that we've had on the podcast. He was attacked here close to Bozeman, down near Ennis, Montana some years ago, and his video, the video of him walking out, face bloodied, head hanging on the part of his scalp hanging off, became an internet sensation. Um. And what struck everyone about him was how calm he was when this was all going down. And you'll even hear years later, while he still wears the scars, he still looks at it in a very pragmatic way. And you'll find that about the rest of of our bare A tax survivors. They look at these attacks in pretty simplistic ways, most of them. Even if you get we get to the end here you'll hear Barry Gilbert his his version of his attack where he says he charged the bear. Brad Jamison, who had his testicles removed from their container by the bear. Is that the right way to say that, Yeah, just scrowed them by by a bear. It talks about not really having any um anger towards the bear, or really any fear towards that bear. And you'll hear the same from Todd or no one that I've talked to that's actually been through this process. Um as as wild and life altering as it as it is, holds any ill will towards the bear, um the collective bear or the individual bear. And so that's that's as interesting as anything to me, being that you know, these these three gentlemen were maimed, mauled pretty substantially by these bears, and they carry these scars with them today, most dramatically Barry Gilbert, but also Brad and Todd are are carrying these things with them for the rest of their lives. So it's a there's a weird connection with the animal that I think these guys get. But we will just say we love a good bear tax story, and then we love to learn from it. And I'll say, Phil, when I'm walking around in the woods, I'm thinking about these stories and thinking about what happened to them, thinking about how they came upon the bear, and also thinking about if it happens, what do I need to do? And so people people have asked why we cover bear tacks so much. Well, one, we like clicks downloads. That's great, we will admit to that. But two, you can learn something from these and you should learn something from these stories. And so that's why we put together this best of volume three? Are these all B P or PP, Phil, Barry Gilbert? Is it? The only? Only ppcaud we decide what PP and BP is before philm PPS Phil, Yeah, little mixed mashed up their nonsensical. Barry Gilbert is PP um. The other two are BP, Berry Gilbert is PP put that on a T shirt or something like that on a T shirt. So yeah, those some of these, uh, we're longer stories. We chopped them all down just to the tales of the attacks, so you can see the similarities and differences of each attack, each occurrence, and how you know within those moments, how those these three men felt about the experience. So hopefully you will enjoy these attacks. We're gonna start it off with todd Or it again us. Todd is probably the most famous of these three, although Brad Jamison, our second bar attack victim, became pretty famous from our podcast. We had lots of downloads, lots of interest in telling his story, but I think overall, todd Or is the most popular, and so we'll start with him. Enjoy title. I guess I grew up on an alder row, and that leads me to the thing that you're I don't know if you're reluctantly famous for this, but famous for anyone. Is a bear attack that happened, um a couple of years back now. And what's interesting to me about it, Hopefully people if they know your name, todd Or, and they've seen the now famous video of you walking out with with the rather fantastic So we'll get to that. I want to get to that that whole story, obviously, but it's more interesting to me that what happened afterwards, right, You upload the video to Facebook, correct, and it gets millions of yews within a couple of like thirty nine million views in forty or something like that. Yes, that's unbelievable. And I didn't even know what a viral video was at that point. I was just like, I have it, or take this video to show a couple of buddies, you know. I had pretty crazy weekend. And then uh, you know, and then a couple of days later, I'm like, Okay, I guess there's probably six or eight guys that I want to see it. So instead of trying to send it separately to each one, I'll just throw it on Facebook and I'll have fifty people look at it. You know. I didn't realize it would be thirty nine million people looking at it. But so get you. Let's let's go forward in time a little bit forty eight hours after you posted, and you see what it's become. What where's your head at? Like? What? You know? Well, within a couple of hours of posting it, I've my phone starts to blow up, and I'm getting texts and emails and phone calls and messages, and my voice box fills up and and I delete them all because I'm like, I don't know what all these numbers are from, you know, and start realizing that people are trying to contact me pretty much every news you know, radio show, news station out there is like wants to do an interview, and I've got people like, hey, this is so and so from CNN and New York and if we can get you on a plane in the morning, you know, to get you out here for a live interview at eight am. And I'm like, I still haven't even washed the blood out of my hair yet, you know. So it was kind of crazy. You have to go to surgery the next day on my arm, and so it was kind of out of control. And I'm not the kind of person or wasn't the kind of person that would want to sit down and talk to people. I'm kind of do my own thing. I don't want to be in front of a camera, and just like no, no thanks. So I didn't respond to anybody. I've got hundreds, probably had five emails, and yeah, just you know, phone was just blowing up. So I just didn't respond to anybody, just deleted everything and just kind of trying to heal up and do my own thing. But then eventually it's like, okay, it wouldn't end. People keep knocking on my door at the local news stations, so okay, it's time to do an interview. And just get them off my back. And then I was like, Okay, it's not too bad. I can do one more. And then all of a sudden it was like, oh podcast, And before I know it, it's kind of just on a regular thing. Now still two years later, still going on here, Well, here we are, I love knives. We're here to talk about that. Yeah, that's the most interesting thing to me about it. What if you had to look back on the last couple of years and what's going on? Because I have a list here of stories on Fox News, CNN, CBS, Huffing, The Post, Daily Caller, New York Post, Men's Health, and then pretty much every local news channel you can enlist, many hunting podcasts, including Randy Newburgh and others, and now here we are. If you had to look back on that, what do you what do you think it was? It just a sensationalist like the video that started and all the sensationalism around it. You know, how do you examine that? And you're you know, looking back at looking back, I think a lot of people, you know, I mean I always kind of wonder why did this happen? You know, why did you just blow up like that? And it's like, well, a lot of people like the gore side of it and my bloody arm with tendons sticking out, but then just being attacked by grizzly bery is pretty rare. And then having the video an hour later, as soon as I got to the truck into safety and you know, and just the whole story together. And I think people are like, how could you even take the time to take a video? Why weren't you at the hospital. And I'm like, well, you know, I spent an hour hiking out. I've assessed my wounds. You know, I know I'm not going to bleed to death. I'm not going into shock. My body's calmed down. That adrenaline rush is starting to fade, and it's like, well, another thirty seconds for a video really isn't gonna matter. I still have a half hour drive to the hospital. And so I think people just I don't know, it's just something so different, people off guard and they I gotta show my buddy. And it just exploded across the world. I mean, different countries offered me to fly me to Australia for a UH News interview. Australians would like something like this that I was like that'd be a great to do, but not until I heal up. For don't want to sit in a hotel room with bandages all over me in Australia for a week. But thanks anyway, Do you have any crazy stories from all that attention that that came up along the way that just that shocked you even more than just the normal, just more of the thing that people would think that, you know, Okay, the next morning, I'm going to get on a plane and fly somewhere when I've got tendons sticking out of my arm, you know, and my scalps hanging off. I just surprised at how much the media is like trying to get me to do something, you know, and to commit to something, and it's just like, I have surgery, i have a healing to do, i can't go anywhere for weeks. I've got a brace on my arm that I have to wear for six weeks to keep the tendons from tearing out again. And so just a little crazy how quickly that went. So so you're saying they didn't really care about you. Yeah, So, I mean I think it boils down to I always say, like I think news is always butcher spy like things become more controversial, more attention when there's video involved, especially in social media. So I think this boils down to a lot a lot of the attention boils down to the fact that you had the mindset to take the video. You know. I think most people I remember watching the first time, going he took a video. This guy is and he's talking like, hey, how's it going. Half my head's hanging off, you know, So let's let's we gotta cover that. We gotta take people through like the moment that you picked your phone up and started to record, like you you're kind of already going over that, it take us a little deeper into you know what you were thinking. Well, it wasn't until I got back to the truck, you know, after the whole the both attacks, and I've got an hour hike out, and the whole time hiking out, I'm just like paying attention. Okay, I could run into another bear here or something. So I'm looking at my wounds and I'm watching got bear spray in my hand and a gun in this hand, and and it wasn't until I got to the truck and I finally finally felt like okay, I'm safe. You know, I'm not going to bleed to death. I'm not going to get attacked again. I'm at the truck and my first thought was there's going to be other people coming up here on Saturday morning of both season to go hunt, and so I need to like warn people of this aggressive bear. And so I was thinking, well, I'll put a note on the bulletin board and try to warn people, but you know, dripping blood all over and I couldn't get my arm to move, so that didn't work. I'm like, Okay, I guess it's just time to go to the hospital. And I'm like, god, I better record that's real quick. I don't know. I just was like, I gotta show a couple of buddies how crazy my weekend is. And there's a couple of friends of mine that we always at the end of the weekend would share a hunting stories. Two guys are kind of like my best friends, and it's like we always like, hey, what did you see? How did you do this weekend? And it was kind of those two guys were on my mind, and it wasn't until like the next day when I'm like, well, there's a couple other guys that I want to see it, and I really had never even thought about, you know, putting it out there like this is going to be some great video people want to see. This is just like well, And that's why I think it came across as pretty real, because it was. It wasn't me like trying to set something up. You were trying to I didn't even know. It wasn't my thing, so it was just like, take this video to show some people that are friends. You know, stuff can happen out there. Got to be careful and were you fairly acting on social media before that or posting a lot ever? All I ever did was post like photos like about once every six months, like maybe I went to Southern Utah hiking. So I just put an album up with thirty photos just so my friends could see photos. And that was it. I never posted anything and talked about anything or zero. If you go back and look at the history, there was like nothing except some pictures posted for like five years until two years ago. Then it all changed it. I still don't do it a lot. I try to just keep up with a few things and let people know what's going on, but not a daily poster. Usually it's hard to be when you live a life outside. Well, let's get into the actual story if for those who don't know, we'll try to get as much detail into that day as as possible. Um, October one, I would like I would say this is probably, you know, in the modern era, or at least in the social media, are probably the most famous bear attack that there is. I mean I thought about this, and I thought about other bear attacks and other attacks that we've known of and try to compare like the iconic image of you walking out on being at your truck there, um, and that's what that would be my take on it. Just just how much people were drawn to that, and we're drawn to like what the words you were saying as you're filming in the videos, right, it's I think it's important that people understand, from soup to nuts exactly what happened. So, you know, October one, I think let's first set the scene, like what are you hunting? Where are you and why why are you there? Okay, it was during bow season and it was a Saturday morning. I've been working for the Fourth Service for the last couple of months, like sixty hours a week, trying to get all of our trail work done. So I finally had a day off, and I'm like, Okay, I got these things done. I can go out and just do my own thing and hike on my own time. And I thought, well, it's you know, hunting season, the regular general seasons coming up in a couple of weeks, so I'm just gonna get out and start get up in the high country and look around and see if I can locate some milk and get an idea where I might want to go hunting later. So I got up early in the morning and drove over to Annis and hiked up by Sphinx Mountain is where I was at over in the Madison Valley. And I got to the trailhead at probably an hour before daylight. And it's usually when I'm hunting or doing anything, I'm always up early. So I'm up there early, get up to the high country at daylight when I when I would have the best chance to see some milk. So I get my pack on, my bear spray in my pistol, and and I had a wolf tag, and I've never shot a wolf, and I thought, well, the wolf season was open, and so I'll carry have my pistol with me in case I get a chance at wolf, but otherwise I wasn't hunting at all. That was just more of a scouting for elk you carrying at this time. I've got a tenemm. It's a nineteen eleven Rock Island Armory tenemm, and I've got a scope on it. I've made a scope mount for it and put a regular pistol I really long, I really scope on it. So it really wasn't a good bear protection. It wasn't because it's this big heavy thing that you can't really good round. Yeah, but you'd be point and shoot with the scope if something's charging you, and it's not a quick draw. I had just a shoulder holster. But really wasn't concerned about bears. I mean, I know they're out there. I spent a lot of time in the woods. I see bears all the time, but usually they go the other direction or they kind of watch you and they kind of meander off. I didn't think there was going to be an issue, so that wasn't my concern. Had my bear spray just in case as well, and took off up the trail in the dark and just a little flashlight out there, and just every you know, minute or thirty seconds, i'd just be like, hey, bear coming up the trail, just in case. It's like, I don't want to run into one of the dark for sure, so very you're away, you are when i's go in my life out there, I'm aware of it. I know there's bears in the area. I see the sign a lot all the time. And so I'm working my way up the trail and it's about three or three and a half miles up and just starting to get daylight, and I step out into this opening and I'm kind of in a hurry because I'm trying to get up as far as i can by daylight. So I'm I'm just moving along pretty fast pace. And I step out into this opening and look up and at the other end of the opening, this sal grizzly and two cubs just step out and we see each other at the same time. Both of us stop and I'm like, well, there's a grizzly bear. And she turns immediately and runs up the trail and over the ridge and just just far away when she when you first saw her, this is like eight yards away maybe because yeah, well, I mean it's yeah, not not something that's really concerned about this point. I'm like, okay, I don't need to even have bear spray out yet. It's clear up there. She's running over the ridge, not too worried. So I wait about a minute and didn't see her. So I'm like, okay, she's gone. I'll never see the rest of the day. So I'll just go the opposite direction and do my thing all day, No big deal. And so I took a few steps up the trail head the other other direction, and I heard something and noise at branch or something caught my attention, and I turned and looked over my left shoulder, and she had dropped her cubs and had circled around the ridge and came in behind me, probably down wind to get my scent. And as I turned, I see her out of the corner of my eye and she's coming over the ridge, wide open charge, and her ears are laid back and she's just screaming through the brush. Stuff is flying and she's just full charge. And so I have my bear spray hanging right on a chest holster, and I just instinctively pulled my bear spray, pulled the safety clip out just in case look back up, kind of expecting a bluff charge, and look back up, and there she has like thirty feet She covered that distance only two seconds. And she's not slowing down, she's not bluff charging, she's not checking me out. She has her ears laid back in a full charge. And I just took a couple of steps back and started spraying, and I just gave a blast of bear spray right in her face, and immediately she just came right through it. Her just her momentum at that speed just carried her through the bear spray, all that weight and just coming. And it just took only, you know, a couple of seconds, and she was right there on me, and I just turned and went down on my face with my hands behind the back of my neck, and she pretty much knocked me down. And the bear spirit, you know, didn't affect her immediately, but it took with like three or four seconds, and she started coughing. But she was able to bite me four or five times on my right arm and my shoulder, and then she started making this coughing sound. It took off just that quick. She was gone. I didn't know where she was. I picked myself up and like, wow, I got some puncture wounds on my arm. But do you remember it ever slowing down at any point like I've had. I had another guy on the podcast that was attacked by Baron A. Falknick, and he talked about a flow state, you know, being being having the ability to move, but his mind was slowed down to the point where he could Yeah, it's two or three seconds, but he can remember every you know, every motion, every little thing that happened. You get feel in the second attack that did. But the first attack, it just happened so quickly that it was just like boom, bite, bite, bite, It's over. She's gone. That you didn't have time to just know. It just happened so fast, it was just done. I'm just surprise, and all of a sudden it's over. So I picked myself up and I'm like, oh wow, that was crazy. Just got attacked by a grizzly bear and I'm alive. That's good. Bear spray worked. Just took a couple of seconds, you know. And I looked down. I got some puncture wounds and I'm bleeding. I'm like, all right, nothing's broke. I'm just going to head down to the hospital and get some stitches. You know, it's kind of a crazy morning all of a sudden. Did you think about what her intent was at that point, like was she just giving you a warning shot or she just well it just you know, most bears will, you know, they'll stop and check you out and see what you are, bluff charge or stand up, snap their jaws or something, or maybe blow by you, but they rarely actually attack you. And so this is I thought it was kind of rare. She was more aggressive than most bears have seen most bear behavior, and apparently I was just too close to her. I was a threat to her cubs and class. Even though it was a hundred yards from her cubs at least, you know, still I was still a threat. And she got my went down wind of me, got my wind and decided that's it, I'm getting him. So it was It was pretty rare, I think for a bear to come in that quick and not even hesitate. But I just picked myself up and said, all right, I got a head down the trail and got down and get some stitches, and I thought that was the end of it. Yeah, do you remember immediate pain or did it was? It just was there a pragmatic nature, because I've again talked to other folks have been attacked by bears, and it always seems like I got to this point, then I went to this point, then I went to this point, a very formulaic way to approach after the fact. Yeah, well, the first bite. I remember that, that first bite, the excruciating pain, you know, right, it was right in my shoulder, I think, the first bite. So I remember that. And then, you know, like I said that, that first attack was so quick that it was just four or five bites and just like three seconds and then it was over. And so all of a sudden, you're like, wow, okay, yeah that hurts, you know, you you know, big inch and a half canine buried into your arm muscle. And then I feel definitely feel it. So but your adrenaline is going to so you're kind of like, wow, that's crazy, and you're not really thinking about the pain. You're just making sure you're not going to bleed out. And then got ahead to the hospital and get some stitches and call it a day. You know, it was all over. Yeah, okay, and then you uh, you gotta going to the truck. And then and then so about five minutes down the trail, and the trail kind of goes right across the crosses the creek there, and so I'm a few hundred yards down the trail and I can't really hear too much because of the water in the creek there, and all of a sudden something just got my attention and a little noise or something. I turned and here she was right behind me, ten feet at this time, coming wide open again, and I've got bear spray in my hand, and there wasn't even time to do anything. It was like I caught her out of the glimpse, out of the glimp corner of my eye, and boom, I'm knocked down on my face, right in the rocks by the creek, and immediately she is on top of me, and this time she's really mad and she's her first bite was in my left forearm. I had my hands up behind my head again protecting the back of my neck, and the first bite was in my left forearm, forearm, and it ripped two of the tendons out and broke my arm. The all on the bone of my arm and just crushed it right there. And I remember that the immediate pain and just the feeling and the sound of that, and I just kind of I went, so I kind of went and pulled my arm away, and that motion in that sound just triggered like a frenzy, and she just grabbed ahold of me, picked me up and she was shaking me. She'd slammed me down. She bit me times in my right arm and my shoulder. At one point she bit me in the side and it kind of turned me. And I remember just seeing her head like a foot from mine, looking right in her eye, and I'm just like pull it back in, and I just used every bit of strength that I had to hold that face down position, protecting the sides of my face and my eyes and my vitals, and trying not to let her flip me over. Are there any real visceral memories like the smell of her breath or the feeling of her claws, or is there anything? Yeah, this this attack, you know, I remember the pain of that first bite, and then your adrenaline kicks in and it's that will to survive, and I just I don't remember any more pain after that, But it's like all the other senses are heightened. It's like I can't remember how bad. She stunck, just the smell of rotten death at she whatever she had been eating or rolling in, you know. And then just hearing. I could hear, you know, every bite, you could hear the crunch of that big canine bearing into your arm mustle. It's like you hear this crunching sound, you're smeller. I can feel her like breathing on the back of my neck, and that was probably the eerius part, was just hearing and breathing the sound in this feeling that breath on the back of my neck just inches from my spine, and I'm just like, you know, one bite in there and that's over. I could be paralyzed or bleed out or whatever. So I just kept telling myself, don't move, she's gonna leave, she's gonna get she's gonna go check on her cubs. You just got to ride this out. And that was my whole focus. I told myself that hundred times. In my head. It was like, don't move, she's gonna leave. Just just hold it down. And at one point, I remember a claw caught the side of my scalp and that's what ripped that big five inch gash and my scalp was hanging over my eyes filled with blood, so I can't see anything. You know, It's just a crazy situation. Just she's picking me up, slamming me into the dirt, you know, my face into the dirt, just shaking me like a rag doll. I was just helpless, and as helpless to some then, I think that when you listen to the accounts of attacks of this nature, there's nothing but helplessness. I mean, I think when all of us think, oh, the bear is gonna attack me. I've got my bear spread, I've got my pistol, I've got my wits. But in most cases, and in a lot of cases, especially yours, that you are helpless and all you can do is lay there. And what interests me the most is as you're laying there, that the thought process that you have because you're not at me that I'm gonna die. I'm dead. I'm dead. I'm gonna die. You're thinking through, Okay, if this white lands here, this this happens, what's the next move, what's the next result. You're talking about an animal that can, you know, kill an elk with one bite or swatter bison, you know, whatever they can. They're just a killing machine, and so I have absolutely no chance to fight back against this thing too grizzly bear, especially a big grizzly bear. So I knew my only only thing I could do is to just play dead and hope she would lead. I couldn't fight back. I thought about trying to get to my pistol, but I didn't want to get flipped over on my back and then have her ripped my face open or my throat or something. But I think it's, you know, one of the things that that will to survive and knowing that there's nothing you can do. And so you had people ask me it's like, oh, did you did you see your life flash before your eyes? You know? When I first start doing interviews and everybody asked that, I'm like, yeah, I thought I was going to die. But then I got to thinking about it, you know, more recently, it's like, I don't think that ever crossed my mind that I was going to die, because you're in that survival mode. You're not in the dying mode. You're like, what do I do to live? How do I live? I gotta get through this. I don't want to die. You don't give up. You never seem to you know, people don't give up when it comes to something like that. You keep fighting back somehow. Yeah, I always think that, I think. And again it's it's cool to hear you say that because I've heard it from other folks similar in similar situations. You think about your death after, like when it's calmed down and be able to then reflect on how close you came, but during it. I think it's important for people to know. I think it's important to have these conversations so people can can hear these because if it happens to you, you have to have some perspective that it is, that it is always a out survival and that's that's your survival instincts are real and they do kick in, and that fear and that angst about the death it doesn't have time to kind of poke its way into your thoughts, right, Yeah, absolutely, I think. And the more you think about your situation prior to like the attack, having you know, practiced my bear spray, having thought about, okay, what happens today if I run into a bear? What am I going to do? And the more you think about that and are more aware of you know, bare behavior and bear safety, then if that situation does happen. It's muscle memory. You just automatically you do something. I didn't think about pulling my bear spray. I automatically pulled my bear spray because I practiced it five times. You know, I didn't think about, Okay, go down and protect the back of your neck. I just did it. All of a sudden, I'm in curled up in a ball, face down, playing dead, and it's like I didn't They didn't have to go through my head. It just happened because you've been I've thought about it before, I'd practiced that. I knew what I needed to do to survive the situation. And so I think that's important to tell people, is like, you know, you can't just go buy bear spray off the shelf and then go out there and start hiking and I'll send a bar charges you and expect to do everything right. You're probably gonna panic, scream and run as your fall down on or throw the bear something you know not or forgets you have it on you. You know, it's like you have to practice those things so it becomes a muscle memory and becomes instinctive and you do it, and that's how you're going to survive. Yeah, I feel strongly. I mean it's a very practical thought process and survival. Survival nowadays if you read the books and watch the TV shows, become about survival skills like being able to start a fire with a bow and a stick. To me, it's less that's like, how do you think about where you are and what you're doing, and how your thought processes lead to preparate, you know, to being prepared with something like this does happen. So it sounds to me like you you had done that work. I think spending my life in the outdoors, you know, ever since a kid in Montana and bear country, and I had seen bears as a kid and talking about it with my my dad and my parents out camping and knowing what to do and want not to do. And then thirty almost thirty years with the four Service, and I've taken bear awareness and bear safety classes and very identification classes. I've carried the bear spray. I've known what to do, and I think that's that makes a difference for sure. And you can't just plan to go out there without any knowledge or any practice and then you know, succeed at something in that situation. All right, Well, let's let's get back to you know, the bear is mauling you. Okay, Like there's a quote to go back to that. Yeah, okay, Yeah, we'll come back to that. Then that's great. Ya, there's a quote that I read that you said the weirdest moment the whole thing was feeling her claws on my lower back, all her weight on me. She was panting and sniffing the back of my neck. Um, So what happened after that? Yeah, so she's got me pinned to the ground. I got I got little scars right below my belt line where she had me, just all her weight on top of me. And I can barely breathe, but I'm trying not to make any noise. I'm trying to breathe quietly. And and then this crazy situation, so she doesn't keep chewing on me, and she'd sniffed the back of my neck and then she'd like bite my shoulder, and then she'd stop and she'd sniff again, and then she'd bite. And it was more of like this last few seconds as her like nipping on me. It was more like testing to see if I was incapacitated, if the threat was over if I was dead. So instead of like just trash me around, it's just checking me. And it's like I had all these like bruises that were in like marks that were like dog bites or something that didn't just put the pressure, yeah, just pressure and just testing me, testing me. And she did that a dozen times probably, and then she just stopped and she was just standing there and it was like dead quiet. I'll remember that. It was like so quiet nothing. I'm like I could feel her weight, but she's not even breathing, you know nothing. I'm just like trying not to breathe myself. And I think she was probably just looking around to see if there was any other threat or where her cubs might be, and checking the situation out. And then all of a sudden, she just stepped off me, and I remember just that I can take a deep breath again, and she stepped off and disappeared, and so I just held that position for like thirty seconds and like not moving. Okay, is she ten feet away? Is she gonna bite me again? I'm just waiting for that attack again or that bite, and no thing, no sound, and I'm like, okay, maybe she's gone. But if I you know make a movement or something like that, and she's right there watching me. I'm gonna get attacked again. So I just held the position, and I got to thinking, if she goes back and checks on her cubs and they're still up a tree or wherever she put him, and then she's like, Okay, let's come back and see if the threat still here. And I'm still there, She's gonna attack me again because I'm still a threat to her. So I decided I gotta protect myself. I gotta get out of here. I gotta do something. So I really slowly pulled my my arm down from I had my arms behind my head still, pulled one arm down and reached under from my pistol that I had a shoulder holster, and I remember reaching in there and it was like, where is it. It's gone. I can't find it. So I'm like, okay, relaxed, Todd. Just reach for your pistol that's right there under your your armpit, you know. And so I reached again and realized that it had been ripped off during the attack. And so I don't know where the pistol is. My bear spray is gone. I can't see anything. I'm completely helpless. So I really slowly reached up and kind of wiped some blood from my eyes and looked each direction, kind of under my arm, and I didn't see her anywhere, but my pistol was laying over there, about ten or fifteen feet away, and I just gove for the pistol and pulled it out of the holster, hammer back, like okay, I'm ready now, and she was gone. She wasn't there anywhere. So I'm like, okay, I gotta get out of here. I need to put distance between her and I and my left arm broken arm with tendons sticking out, my wrist is all curled under and it's just useless. So I tucked the pistol under my arm pit right here where I could grab it easily, picked up the bear spray in this hand, and just kind of with this arm against my side, and just took off down the trail and just said, okay, I gotta get distance down there, and so I went fard have to get to the safety. It was about three and a half miles, like an hour hike out there, and it's a rough trail down the canyon across the creek. A couple of times and it's bear country, so you know, it's like you could run into another barrit eight o'clock in the morning on the way out, and I was thinking about that, going, oh jeez, this is the third time. So after like fifteen minutes of hiking, I'm down the trail like a mile or something, and then I you know, I'm starting to calm down, going, okay, she's gonna attack me again. You know, she's way back up there with her cubs. I got nothing to worry about. So I stopped and just checked my wounds and you know, to see if I need some you know, bandaging or turniquet or something. How bad am I bleeding. I didn't want to you know, bleed out on the way to the truck kind of thing. And so I got to thinking about that now that I'm calmed down a little bit and everything. You know, I still had blood dripping off my elbows and soaking through my shirt into my pants, but I could tell there was no severed arteries. I'm not going to bleed to death. And I'm like, okay, just keep going, get to the truck and then you can do some first age. So you were trying of traveling and assessing at the same time, I was, yeah, I would like be hiking, and I kind of stopped, kind of looked down at my elbows, my arms, and just make sure there was nothing, no no guts hanging out, you know, anything like that. So I'm okay. And I stopped I think twice on the way down, and took me about an hour to hike out of there, and I finally got to the truck at the end there and right to the trailhead, and it was just like a relief, like, Okay, I've made it to the truck. I'm not in shock, I'm not bleeding out, I didn't get attacked again. There's bears, your mountain lions waiting for me down here, and I'm good to go. I'm gonna make it. I'm gonna survived at this How much of that hour do you remember, like what was going through your head during that time? Was it still was it still very pragmatic or had it kind of scattered a bit at your thoughts? I think it was still, I mean, trying to think back at it, I remember that constantly thinking about what was going on around me. I mean, I like watching behind me, watching up on the hill, just to make sure I wouldn't run in. You know, like I said, there could have been another bear, and it's like, if there is another bear, I gotta make sure I avoid it because there's no way I can fight back at this point or protect myself. I can't hardly hold a pistol or anything, and this arm is useless. So I remember watching that constantly around me as I'm hiking out, and then at the same time kind of assessing the wounds as I'm going. And beyond that, it was more of just like over and over in my head, like you're almost there, here, almost there, You're almost to the truck. It's everything is good to go. You're gonna make it, You're gonna survive this. And I wasn't really thinking about what I was gonna do when I got there. I just knew I had to get to the truck and get to the hospital. Yeah. Well, yeah, if there's any time in your life you know what you have to do, it would be that I gotta get in my truck and go. I wasn't looking for Elk or anything at that point. I wasn't scouting out any ELK or any of it. If you saw like a big bull get a photo of him, but I can't hold the camera, so I'll skip that today. So that would have been a view. Said, well, I stopped to glass first, I saw a bull. I stopped about now, didn't go that farm there. When you get back to the truck and you know you're in safety. Um, other attack survivors, I've talked to you, they talk about you know either I've heard it a couple of different ways. I've heard like the shakiness of the adrenaline and kind of the feeling of the jitteriness. And then I've heard like the the the intense calm, and like the stiffening of posture, and like the forcible. I will live through this, This is not it for me, Like or you where were you in that well? It had been it's been like an hour since the attack, and I've had all this time to think about it and what just happened, and you know, running it through my head and then just the relief of getting to the truck and getting to the trail out of the canyon, you know, to safety. And I felt, I think you know that a lot of the adrenaline and war off by then, and I was feeling a lot of pain. My left arm was just excruciating pain, like it was in advice from the tendons sticking out and the broken you know, all the nerve damage, a lot of nerve damage, and so the I felt pretty calm. I didn't feel like I was in shock or had that adrenaline rush anymore. It was just like, Okay, I survived this. You know that, you know plan B here, next step is to get to the hospital. And really hadn't you know, I wasn't nervous anymore. I wasn't I don't know, I've I've probably could have joked about it at that point. If there was someone else there, I could have been like, how do I look? You know, it's it's a bad hair day. But because you know, because I felt so relieved that I was, I was okay, I survived this. I'm out of you know, it's just it's it's it's it's not over. I've got a lot of rehab to do, but the death, the life threatening situation is over. And that was just a complete relief during the whole you know, from the time of the attack, you get back to your truck, were there any you know, people that kept popping into your head, voices or experiences. Were there anything that you called back to, you know, during I guess what I would imaged would be a lot of terror and just a lot of you know, craziness. Were there things that you called back to in your life or people that you thought about? Uh? I don't really think there was much at that point. It was more of, you know, everything. My whole focus that entire time was on that survival mode. And I you know, it's like, you know, people had asked me. It's like that, you know, your life flash before your eyes and you remember these people and you know that in your life and wish you had said something or all that, But that, like the I told you that never happened because you're in survival mode. You're not thinking you're dead at this point. You're like you're still going to make it somehow. So it was all about just getting back, getting to safety, and then like, Okay, I gotta get to the hospital. You know. I knew I had to call my girlfriend and let her know what was going on. That was going to be something, and let my parents know. My parents were on vacation, you know, so I'm like, well, I'm not going to bother them until after the whole day of surgery and getting such step and then I'll give him a call. But I did I might drive out. I did uh call my girlfriend and just say it was like eight thirty in the morning now, And so she answers the phone. It's kind of funny. She answers the phone like oh hi, and I'm like, hey, how you doing. She's like, oh, I just getting ready to go have coffee with her girlfriend and and I'm like okay, and and she's like, well, why are you calling me, aren't you I thought you were gonna be up on top of the mountain all day. And I'm like, well, I had a little situation. And so then I told her I got attacked by a bear and she was in nursing school, so I knew she was going to have a lot of questions. And so I'm like, I've got a broken arm, I've got tendency or something sticking out of my arm, I've got a big cut on my head, but I'm not bleeding to death, and I'm driving myself to the hospital. And and so she had a couple more questions, and then I said, all right, if you can meet me at the hospital with some some clean clothes and uh, we'll see you in an hour or so. And other than that, I just was like heading to the hospital. That was my focus. And then when you get to the hospital and you said you kind of list out all your injuries. Um, I read that the doctor spent eight hour stitching up you know, twenty six inches of different parts of your body. Yeah, well I was. I was driving to the hospital, and I well, on the way down to the hospital, I ran into a rancher that was getting into his mailbox that morning, and and uh, I kind of flagged him over and he saw the bloodle over me. I told him I was attacked by a bear. And I said, hey, can you call the hospital and just give them heads up that I'm coming in so I don't walk in looking like this and surprise everybody. And he had asked if I needed a ride, and I said, no, I've now already got a mess in my bloody mess in my own truck. I don't want to make a mess eagers too, And so I went ahead and drove myself in And when I got to the hospital about thirty minutes later, I pulled into the emergency entrance there, and there was a sheriff and a doctor and a nurse all standing out there waiting for me. They'd got the word, and so I pulled up there and tried to put my truck into park. But at this time, it's almost two hours or an hour and a half since my attack, and I can't hardly lift my arms. All these wounds are really starting to cramp up, and I'm just kind of immobile. And I did have enough strength in my arm because of a big tear on my right shoulder. I didn't even lift the truck or the put the truck into park. So I kind of motioned at the sheriff and he came over and got the truck in park for me, and then I couldn't get the seat belt off, so he had to help me get the seat belt off, and I remember he was like, I'm surprised you took time to to buckle up, and I was like, first yeah, I was like, well, I just survived two fair attacks. I didn't want to die in a car wreck on the way to the hospital after all of that. So the lecture for caution there. But anyway, so they got me. I walked into the hospital and I remember everybody that was in the hospital I heard about it now, so all the nurses and even I think some of the patients were all kind of lined up along the main hallway on each side. So I kind of had like this parade first, see what this looks like, you know, so we'll go in there. And then they did X rays everywhere I'd been bit. They took X rays to see what are the broken bones. I had just had the one in my my on the bone my arm, and then about seven or eight hours with a doctor on each side just putting stitches in, and all the puncture wounds were really deep, so they put a stitch down like halfway into make sure it was closed, and then a stitch at the top, and then took quite a bit of time on my head to make sure they stitched that really well. I don't remember how many stitches, but I think it was like twenty six centimeters of stitching they put in total on my my arm, in my head, and then the my left arm where I had the tendons sticking out. Remember the doctor he was like, well, I think those are tendons or something. He's gonna You're gonna see an orthopedic surgeon. Sir, I would wish you to be more specific. I think those are tendons or something. He's like, I think you're gonna have to see an orthopedic surgeon. I'm like, all right, but he's like, I'll just push kind of get that stitch back over and closed up for now, you know, to stop the bleeding. So I remember remember him trying to push the tendons back in my arm, and they're you know, they're kind of rigid, so they're sticking out, and he pushed men and try to stitch it and they'd pop back out, and he has was having a heck of a time, but finally got me all closed up and sent me home that night. And it was the next day then I had to go into the orthopedic surgeon and they spent about I think like four hours doing a bunch of kind of exploratory surgery. They had to reopen all the wounds that the dock the day before it stitched up and clean everything out and look to see what kind of nerve damage or tending damage, and and uh, I remember sitting in there and I got I wanted to watch it all. He's like, well, if we can, you know, give you some drugs or whatever. I'm like, just do the local. In my arm, I had the big, big screen TV right there above my head, and I'm watching the whole thing, and he's like, okay, this is your all on the bone. He'd tap on it and I could feel like the vibration of my shoulder and he's like, okay, this is the tendons that are ripped out. And then I'd be like, I can't quite see it, and he lift up the curtain a little bit so I look right down at my arm, look right into my arm. They're like, oh, that's pretty cool. So anyway, they he'd had to figure out how to attach the the two tendons again, because one was from my wrist to one from these two fingers, and so he would sit there and find something to get my fingers to move and then finally stitch that in there and just give everything back to where it would work for me. And took a four or five hours and put to put me out. Okay, I don't want to know. I didn't want any kind of medication at all. I wanted to be totally so I could watch the whole thing and well, well, and so you know, at this point in the story, everything's okay, like like as okay as it can be. In this situation. You feel like you're you're going to mend. The doctors are saying you're going to recover. No real long lasting effects other than the memories of the tendons were kind of questionable. That there was the muscle in my farm was ripped in like three different pieces, and so he kind of stitched all the muscle back together and reattached the tendons, but it was like hamburger in there, and it just ripped up so bad. He was having a hard time getting a good solid point of attachment. So they gave me a brace to put on my my arm that would keep my wrist turned back up and my fingers up just so I wouldn't put any pressure and tear that out until it healed well. So I had to wear that brace seven for six weeks and just until we had a good you know, sure that everything was good and solid in there. And then a lot of rehab. I had like three or four months of three or four days a week a rehab, just every day going and they're trying to get motion back in my hand and my wrists and fingers to work and be able to to move them and all different in separately, independently moving my fingers and grabbing things and picking things up. And it was a slow process to get all that to come back, just the amount of nerve damage. And I still don't have any feeling in my forearm here is all numb. And then right up here where my arm was broke, when I when I touch right there, I can feel it down in my fingership. So it's really weird just from the nerve damage. Still, but everything's working pretty good. I mean it's it's a little slower. I can't quite open my hand all the way. I don't have all the strength there. I've got a pretty good hole in my arm or the muscle was just shredded that just never healed up. Well, just no muscle there anymore. And so it's it's not but I'm doing most everything I need to do and I don't even think about it anymore. What about the Grizzly like what well, what happened to the fish wildife and parks, fish and game and the grizz the inter agency, you know, Steady Grisly Bear, steady team went back in, I believe, the next day on horses, and as far as I know, they did not see her at all, And so she's probably still out there. And I think about that every time I go back in the woods in that country. It's like, is she gonna You know, bears have the best sense of smell of any of the animals out there, So if she's a couple of miles on the other side of the canyon or up the canyon and the winds carrying up there and she smells me, she's going to recognize that, just as if I was there, because her sense of smell is so good. So I was wondering, it's like that means she's gonna come back. She like, I don't want to have anything to do with him. He didn't taste good, and she's gonna go the other way. But I always think about that, So as far as I know, she's probably still out there. Yea. And did they ever did you ever think about her age or or her weight or her size? How much do you know? It's hard to say when that's such a quick situation, but she was definitely a full size bear, you know, and you know, female grizzly might way up to four hundred pounds, you know, three or four hundred pounds if for a big bear. So she was definitely big. And I remember she was just crushing me when she was on top of me that weight and just you know, I was a rag doll picking me up and would literally just shake me back and forth and then like let go, and I would like roll like ten feet and then I just roll back face down again protecting myself. And so I was at just a rag doll head. I was helpless, unbelievable, and and I think I know the answer to this because it almost always is the same. You have no resentment towards the animal or or you know, she was protecting her cubs, and you know, in that situation, I think she was a little over protective because they were a hundred yards away and she actually left them and circled around to get my wind and then came in. But you know, every every bear is different. Some bear could tolerate you at fifty feet. Some are won't tolerate you at a hundred yards. I guess. So she was more aggressive than any other, you know, bears I've been around. I probably see a dozen bears every year, a couple of grizzly and a lot of black bear, and usually they're going in the other direction and they might run away or they walk away like whatever. It's just another person. I don't care. You know, she was definitely more aggressive and a little bit different. I don't I don't blame her for what she did. I don't want to go out and get revenge on her or something. And you know I do. I do believe there should be some you know, grizzly bear management. There's being a lot more there's a lot more grizzlies out there than there used to be, and a lot more people in the woods, and I think we need to manage that population. Um, if they do get to go through with that and put out you know, licenses, I have no desire to go shoot one. I you know, I can't afford it. Plus I don't really care. It's not a big deal. I don't need revenge and I don't need a grizzly bear. I guess I grew up, all right. So that was Todd or Thanks to Todd for coming and sharing a story that was one of the more popular episodes from the new format at the HC Way back in the April of nine, back in the annals of time, way back what would now be about eight months ago. So I believe in the dark ages. Yeah, it's unbelievably lasted that long. Back then, it was just me and a mike. There was no studio. In fact, we did that one in just the conference stream across the hall here. Um. It was definitely before phil when large perfect for podcast. I was just running like a little zoom recorder. Uh. I think the coffee might have been too hot and burned Mr Or's lip. It was a It was a disaster back then. But now we've got a nice fresh studio and we got Philly Engineer doing just fine, just fine. So we're gonna get to the next And now I will tell you this next podcast is the most listen to, most downloaded podcasts in the history of the Hunting Collective. Really yeah, And we recorded you had a year ago, and I went down to San Diego, Mm the Whales Vagina. I was gonna ask, yes, I believe roughly San Diego. I believe it's just sant Diego. Um, So we went down there. I met up with a guy named Brad Jameson. Now Brad is a resident of Kodiak Island, Alaska. I would say that we, uh, here's the hunting Collective broke the story, and it was a pretty haring one. This is one where this this guy is definitely dead if his friends aren't there to save him, um, in a pretty dramatic fashion. And I think what came out of it was, of course that some of his injuries were particularly notable. We've talked about that a little bit already at the container. The container, some the the the bits came out of the container, but they were put back in eventually, so that I think that's that's certainly it's a compelling story. It had me cringing and had me making noises, have me roll around the ground. But you'll hear again, just like Todd, you'll hear that Brad approaches the story fairly, reasonably and pragmatically. He doesn't over sensationalize anything. He's not trying to spin a yard. He's just telling you the blow by blow and what happened, why it happened, how it happened, and how it got out alive. Um. And and you definitely hear it in his voice, and that's what I enjoyed about hanging out with Brad is that he you know, we had had lunch after the podcast, talked more about the attack. He just it was just something that happened to him in his life. He didn't want to be famous from, and he didn't want anything from and he just wanted to get back up to Koda and go hunting again. And so you know, as you'll hear even if you listen to the Meat Eater podcast, the Meat Tree, the bear attack from a fog neck, the same the same place where Brad was attacked. You know, those guys talked about how it changed their life and how they view their children, and and Brad didn't think about it that way, at least at least to my mind. He's just he looked at it has something that happened, something he needed to get over and move forward from, which I definitely appreciate because his his attack was traumatic is traumatic can be. So I've talked to Brad recently. He's he's all healed up. He's back hunting, uh and doing quite well. So enjoy Brad Jamison. The bear attack on a funk that guy. I guess I grew up on the road the boys and I so I go for an elk hunt, and uh we took a boat over actually um and got to our kind of hunting spot where we do how uh let's say like an hour and a half. So that's not long. No, it's not. It's not bad at all. Um, not from the main like dog Harbor area and Kodiak anywhere he launched from. But that's probably where most people launched from, anybody's dog harbor. And it just kind of depends on, of course, the ce state and the tides because there's some passes that you can take to get there. Um, they can get through, otherwise you gonna go all the way around. They'll take a lot longer. But I think about an hour and a half that is what it was. And as a resident, is it pretty easy to grab a tag to go over there? Yeah? No, Um, the registration hunt opens um all on the kind of for lack of a better term, I guess quota on on how the draw hunts go. So the elk has really really highly regulated, and it was let's see two seasons prior to this one where none of us actually got to go. We were trying to make it work and get everybody organized, and they shut it down. So the way it works is the draw hunts all happen and then uh, I guess some years they might not even open it, but they'll open it on the same date. Uh remember what was this year. I think it's November or something like that. That sounds about it right, maybe, Oh, no, October would be October. Yeah, it had to be so October I think is when it opens for the public and you just go pick up your tag. It's free and every day you get a call in find out if it's still open, and then as soon as you do get one, you're required to call it in I think within forty eight hours. Really the same day is oftenly what you want to do, um, just to let them know what the population is and then whether whatever quota they set fishing game does then it's like closed down and unlike all you know, most other you have like five days, it's like, okay, five days calling but it's like the Elk is very very strict and um because it's all it's all herds there and UM, I don't know where that's going on with that, but yeah, October and we kind of switched out with some other guys on this hunt and sent some other guys over there first and then we swapped out with them and they didn't have any any luck whatsoever. And as you well know, and I know she has gets some good experience over there. I've seen some of the shows and podcasts as well. But the weather is just also just as crazy over there, even probably more so, I think, um, because there is no roads, no really well taken pass or trails, Like if you're gonna find something, your goal is to kind of get up the ridgeline and and then hopefully you can see. But if the cloud cover is low enough, you're not gonna able to see anything, Like you just can't get anywhere. And um, obviously come to find out, it's like the bare population there is is well aware of Elk and and the people there, and they're not city bears, you know, they're very h well versed in in being the primal creature over there. Did you like when going into this this particular hunt and hunted up before obviously and um, going into this hunt, what's your you know, what's your mindset? You know, this would be a lot of questions in one but had you had any bear experiences on a fog neck prior and going into this hunt, What was your preparation as far as communication with the mainland, UM and medical supplies and protection from bears. I mean, I know, like that's informed by just your general knowledge of wilderness or just medicine and and what you've done in the past, but that's also informed by you know, what you've seen over there. And UM. So yeah, me and the boys, h it's always standard for us every time we're going out bringing a SAT phone. UM, we always have a SAT phone with us. At least one guy's have that. We actually had multiple dorm in reaches with USTA. Yeah, and well it's funny enough. I've got to get a story on that when we when we get to it. UM in comparison, I guess. But uh, And then guys have gps is and cell phones as well that we use for gps is. All of us pretty much use the guy app on our cell phones. It's it's it's great, but no, those are kind of our our primary like electronic devices that well use UM. And then we always have a first aid kit that everybody has pretty much standard with them as well as turning kits. And then every guy's got one of those. UM. And then everybody's carry with them. Some guys will have like a little bit more or less depending but you know, everybody, everybody's got one of those. The dorm injury is I think we had at least two, and then at least like a plethora of rifles, you know, and and pistols combos thereof. So I think we pretty much covered our bases. And to be honest, like when this all went down, I still think it went down textbook like, couldn't win anybody better under the circumstances. And uh, never had any bear experiences over there before, and honestly before that had never even seen. Yeah, it was kind of kind of surprised even us. So the year prior to when we did the elk hunt, Um, we kind of came up with this system. We did it all in one go and got the elk scun them, brought all the meat away from the carcasses, and then built kind of a new site with a fire at it, and our theories just you know, having the fire hopefully keep the air away or at least kind of determined for a little while, and then we just kind of did this uh shuffling uh short movements. Um, we just go a few hundred yards, make another fire, bring the meat over there, and then just cart back and forth and then just basically go fire to fire to fire to fire. Um until we got back to the boats on the beach and system really really worked good. Never saw any bear. Uh, the only thing we saw at that point was foxes. The foxes obviously, he's like, who meat, you know, like on the on these islands. Oh, for sure, we've done a buffalo hunt. Um. I think first year I was there down towards the south end of the island, and uh, that was the first thing that I saw pop up. As soon as our buffaloing down like that gray fox came like right up to me. Didn't care all. He was just like, hey, what's up. It's like just nose in the air, like looking it's like, oh I smell smell meat and he was ready to go. But uh, it never really came up before. But that's another thing I think with the wildlife in Kodiak is there's no real predators. I think, uh, like other places, the bear, as much as I know that they can take down like deer, elk and buffalo, it's not really a normal occurrence. They rely on you know, meats or meats, berries and twigs that they're inland or if that's where they're going for and then mainly the salmon of course, and that that's always their main food consumption. So I think they'll take carcasses and stuff like that when it's when it's they are and ready, and especially the more hungry they are. But I don't know, I think just probably a waste of energy for them, so they don't actually try taking them down. More scavengers um, but yeah, no predators there. But anyway, uh yeah, back back to a fog neck and I would say like as a as a um, you know, to make your point a little bit, you'll go to Kodiak Island and look at how many blacktailed deer there are. There's no way that that predation is that strong. If you look, the predation numbers can't be that high because their deer every everywhere, everywhere. Well I have to go on a tangent on this one. Now specifically with the deer. It wasn't this year was great, phenomenal, fantastic deer everywhere. The deer look really really healthy, a lot of fat on them, both mine and the ones other guys that I work with, killed like really really good, healthy deer, which is really great to see because the year prior was horrendous. Almost nobody got deer, very very scarce. And the reason for that, in my hypothesis and other guys that I've talked to, is all because of a kind of an early freeze and it just killed off all the salmon berries. There was no salmon berries, uh, like on island at all. There was no season because a lot of people go out and harvest and pick them and you know, make stuff with them, pies and juices and whatever else, and completely killed them off. And therefore I think that, you know, the deer population really hurt, not probably just because of the salmon berries, but other things that that that frost could have killed as well, just hurt the population so much. But the deer just thrived there. And from what I've been told is like the entire population of deer on Kodiak started with like seven deer on a separate island on Long Island just off the coast there, and I think some down in the south then as well, and they just dropped them off. And the deer from Long Island, you know, they swam over and the ones in the South are like that, all just like populated, just like blew up completely, just hardy creatures with the harsh conditions. But of course with no predators, that's that's what takes them down. It's it's it's the harsh conditions in the weather and then nevitally that's so it's not like they're dealing with coyouts and wolves and you know, other predators to take them. Yeah. I mean, with low predation generally low predation numbers, and and winter kill being you know, winter kill and predation being kind of in habitat loss kind of being the three things that normally will drive population numbers down. There's not a whole lot of any of those things other than winter kill going on. But you know, I could sell yeah, I mean the one time that I hunted blacktail deer and codiac. I mean, you could look across the flats, look across the Hummack flats and it would be two deer and one. I mean, I have photos of two standing in one flat. Cheese over there. That's wild. I'm swarm of secrets. You can't tell you where that's right, That's right, I get it. But yeah, but but that's you know, that's my experience on one small part of the island, but for sure is in that harsh environment. To see those animals frive like that, that's that's. Um. It was always amazing to me. Yeah, you know know, they're, like you said, hardy animals. Back to falknecks. Yeah, another tangent. All good tangents. But podcasts are about they're all about tangents. So so you had never you had quite the system for for getting your meat out, um, and never had any any bare experiences to this point. But still very prepared. I mean you guys are all carrying side arms, correct, not not everybody. Some guys had side arms, and uh, some guys had rifles and then some guys didn't have anything at the point, just kind of like because of the situation where we did, uh go for the elk, things had kind of changed up at the course time. At first everybody everybody had a rifle on them, um, but our our goal had changed like okay, we're only getting one elk, and and uh that was really the deals like okay we're only getting one elk. This times like just bringing out because kind of setting up for that, uh, the guys prior hadn't seen anything. The conditions were just horrible. They were just got awful, like it was really really high winds, heavy rains, cold, and we just wanted to focus on normal conditions and normal conditions there and even the cloud cover was was low a lot of the times and of course affected visibility. So first we were gung ho and I think we were there for two days and hadn't seen anything. We didn't even see any deer, like we're just talking about the deer population. Didn't see any deer, didn't see any Elk and see any bear, didn't see anything, no fox. That was like, I didn't see anything living practically, and it's like you gotta be kidding me. It's like nothing, and we're like, okay, that was a little disheartening, and the other guys with the same way and like, okay, well, it's definitely it's a relatively big island. When you're on foot and having to work, like you've mentioned before, SA, it takes you hours to go anywhere, so you gotta kind of set yourself up, and not knowing where the actual like population of Elk is like can really hurt you. Did you guys bring any like bear fencing, or when you camped every night or did you just nope, just camping, yep, just asses out and hope nothing bad happens. Talk about that a lot, because we spent a lot of days out in the field, like sleeping overnight, and uh, I spent a lot of nights out in the field in a biddy and just this, you know, small like rainproof sack and just call a bear brito because it's gonna be a bad day if that bear decides that you just fell really good and decides to take you. Gonna rip that brido open there, Yeah, exactly, and uh nope, that's all we had is just our shelters, and we were down more towards the coast, and because of the numbers we weren't. We've never really had issues before. So as soon as you have the meat and all that, I think that's when it changes everything. They're willing to you know, they're willing to inch a little bit further in because of the reward rather than you know, how many guys you have in your in yourn five footing myself, I mean five people, that's a good determ for a bear. But when there's the the encouragement to come and check that meat out. It's probably a little bit more. I think the I don't know, people have different theories and their own stories, and I think fire always helped to do so. It's like when you have a base game, you know't having that fire, It's kind of like, okay, I think I don't know if you're cooking something that's going to change stuff. But as soon as you have a fire in the smoke, I would think that, you know, the bears don't really like that, but then again, maybe they do. There's some theories on the gunshots and Kodiak being like dinner bells. You hear that all the time, and it's like, okay, that's the time that you have to be most aware, like bear aware, as they say, because it's like as soon as that happens, like you're just waiting. Did you guys ever consider bear spray as as something you would do? Would you do? You know? Like, and I know I got a lot of guys use it. I'm not a huge proponent of it. Um. I still prefer, you know, a side arm if I'm gonna carry something and not carry a full rifle. Otherwise, I always try to carry a full rifle with me. Um, I don't know. The bear spray supposedly works, but as we talked about with the the guy that was just uh just got mauld in Montana, you know, hit twice by that sow and she obviously ran straight through the bear spray. And I've heard other accounts of that. And I think with the bears that are there, if they want you, if they want what you have, they're gonna get it. It's only for Yeah, I think that kind of bear that's kind of curious. That makes you feel more uneasy, like in all honestly, like with with a bunch of guys around, like you're probably gonna scare the bear off. The bears probably not gonna like have any interest and eventually go away. He might get close that might scare you, but like you're probably pull out the bear spray. I think in fear. And that's why I think a lot of times, like you hear about the you know, the false charges and people shooting bear and it does kind of suck. It's like, yeah, of course you didn't protect yourself and others, but when a bear is just kind of like, hey, you're in my area, and just kind of like a confused. It's hard and you know, I know other hunters have have had those experiences plenty of times before, including Coal, as we you know discussed before. I love the guy and you know what's up Cole. But when when he actually hitting the path event event when he found out and he gave me She's like, hey, assholes, supposed to be me to get to like I'm the very guy, Like this is supposed to happen to me first, not you. So he gave me plenty of ship, but yeah, I know it's a very real thing. And the bear spray if if you're gonna if that's all you got, awesome, you know that's all you got. But definitely strength numbers and you guys always stick together when you're when you're in a place, and that was, you know, the part of the thing. But um, again, we were just focused on the elk then, you know, not seeing anything else. The last thing any of us were expecting to run into is bear. Um in those conditions, and well let's let's get into it. Yeah. So so you guys had a hunting a couple of days not seeing hot nor hair. Yeah, nothing, I think it was And I take that back. I think it was the end of the second day, just as the sun was going down where another guy was with me. He he spotted them. Finally. We're like, we're just trying to find different spots, like going through the spruce and uh and and finding open areas where you can kind of glass and see whatever we can see. And finally, high up on a bridge line, I saw like two to four of them, I think, well now three four like four alcay up on the bridge line. Way, thank god, Okay, it's like we finally saw something. We know that they're They're awesome. Immediately, like all right, let's break down, let's head back, let's see where we can get the boats in like with you know, with the surf and the wind that the way they were, we want to make sure and the kind of make this plan of attack to get up to where they were the following morning. So we sculpted it out, looked on some maps just kind of glass the area and uh found this bridge line that we decided to take and um made our plan and you know, set up following morning, got up early, early before the sun and started hiking up and certainly no easy going there, you know it took us, took us a little while, but we made it up, and I think the line was still the best that we could have taken. And finally got up on the ridge line and hadn't seen anything, and conditions were still terrible. I think the weather predicted that, you know, it was supposed to be better. Of course it was not the opposite. It was actually more rainy and uh I didn't seem at first. And we had our suspicions because if people aren't aware, you know, elka very no max, they're not like deer would say, oh, sun goes down like they're gonna graze a little bit, maybe bed down, like they'll probably be there, and then moving the elk and move like really great distances like off in the night and so off. Question we get out there are like shit, my gosh, damn it, like where are they? And I started walking the ridgelines more and finally saw but it wasn't for as the whole herd, and I hadn't seen a full herd of elk yet, um no, well in Kodiak anyway, like I've heard it like okay, there's always you know, big herds of them, but we've always just seen like one ts and that's what we hunted, and honestly that's kind of better just because you don't have so many eyes on you. But finding the herd was like really really nice to were like, oh, we were just extent, you know, really really excited finally finding them. So we're at the top of the ridge line there at the bottom of the valley, and then it was kind of like great, but now what are we doing? And of course we're just sitting there for a while and looking around and how far below you are they at this point, I don't know what elevation we were at. We were pretty high we had we were definitely above alpine, so I don't think we're the top elevation ft or so. And then they were almost probably at sea level, yeah, not not very much higher. So um, there was very little cover getting down to them. A lot of older but not really like good spruce where you're gonna get a shot anyway. So that was really the talk is like, Okay, how do we get down to these elk um within range, get a shot and then of course getting them out else or out afterwards. And we figured probably just take the valley out, but uh, we decided like, hey, there's five of us. Let's split up. Three go on one side of the herd and two you stay on the other side of the herd. And we basically just kind of trying to make our way down and pray that they don't just find out we're there, and then jet on the other side of the alley. Hopefully they'll just kind of like either move one way or the other. Because they weren't really moving too much. They were they seemed a little weird, little off. We couldn't really tell what it was. And so we're just like, okay, let's just split them, get down. Then whoever can take a shot. We'll hear the shot and like cool, that's it, and then go to the other guys. And uh so we started moving, and myself and two other guys with the three man group and I started moving to to one side of him, making our way across the ridge line then eventually down and then of course we run into three other hunters and oh my god, I couldn't believe it. We were just just in awe. One we've started in there two days, like it was definitely like a piste off moment, and they were below us. They never saw us um far far down below it. They were just classing, and it was like, okay, rightfully, So how whever they got there, you know, they got there, they were clear they're in front of us. But it piste us off because no tact whatsoever right out in the open, moving straight towards the alkn like okay, no, one of the elk are kind of like weird, you know, their eyes are up all on the hills. Were like, well, there we go. It's like these you know whatever gentleman's act like yeah, gentlemen. I don't know who they were, but it was like, yeah, definitely annoying. They're probably just they wanted to be fair chase. Yeah, yeah, right, and uh you know, they were doing their thing and whatever. Maybe it worked out for all, I don't know, but obviously it ticked us off. And like, okay, well rightfully, so these guys are lower, gonna get them sort of like the right away, but like we're not gonna end here, like all right. The three of us decided like, hey, let's book it back to the other side, kind of kind of climbed back up the ridgeline, make a way over, trying to spook the elk and then get back with the other two guys, like, Okay, from there, we're just gonna try to make our way down and uh get on the other side. So it's like, hey, if if we get down low enough we take a shot first, then so be it. Or if they take a shot, hopefully they'll kind of like push them drive them towards us, so we're kind of be ready. So I kind of took the lead, running, sprinting my ass off to link up with the other two guys, and um, the two that were with me were behind me, and we're just kind of moving across the bridge line. I start making my way across and then eventually down and I'm just kind of starting to break down out of alpine into the alder the thick brush there, and I saw the hat sticking out of the order of one of the other guys, so that was kind of my eye, and uh, one of the guys that was with me, he got my attention. He's like, hey, he's like, we want to take another line down, and we were separated, you know, a good distance at this point. So I started my waking making my way up towards him. And this is a really really steep hill and a matter of fact, there's a there was a cliff kind of separating us. Um not huge or anything, but it's probably you know, thirty forty wide, maybe like tall, just enough that it's like he's not gonna like jump down over. It's like he's gonna be above it with the other guy, and I'm below it, and we're kind of converging at that cliff and then paralleling at that point. So I'm kind of just coming up towards the cliff, kind of kind of back up the hill at this point, and I step over this rock, kind of climb over like terrain feature, so to speak. And as soon as I do, I stand up and turn and right down the old or five yards away, there she is. And immediately, like you know, just stopped frozen and at this like what's she doing? She looking at you, she looking away. So so that was it was like when I saw it was just just a big ball fur, like no features, no anything. I just see is this big thing of fur, and you know, I just I just stopped, like I couldn't really make out anything. And of course everything immediately like slows down, and the way I really have related the story with other people that I've told is kind of like the state of flow where I'm like, okay, everything immediately went slowmation. I got like no con at the time. From this point on, like everything we slowed down, making all the decisions in my head. And um so for me, I'm just saying, you know, the gears are turning, and the first instinct I didn't know, you know, I just big thing of fur. Okay, what is it? You know, my mind's like, okay, processing, processing, because I'm not even thinking about Bear, I'm thinking about Elk. And I'm like, okay, that's not the right color. And the color was actually like grayer, it wasn't really brown like even brown Bear and Elk, and I'm like okay, processing. But of course, no time whatsoever. I just I just stand up there. And as soon as I did, I took a step back, and because it kind of dawned on me, finally okay, this, whatever it is, it's not good. I know I know better and took one step back. And whether it was the point where she finally heard me or finally smelt me and caught wind of me, she just turned her head and charged like immediately and h and as soon as I took the step back. I knew that was going to be the case anyway, Like I said, with my experiences as the bears, like everything's good, fine and danny, because you don't surprise them, like you never surprise at bear, Like they know you're there well before you do. Otherwise, like you're hunting it from like hundreds of yards yards away, you know you're glassing them. But like if you're that close, like no way they know you're there. And so as soon as I did, and like there was no doubt in my mind, like this is gonna happen, Like there's there's no getting out of it. You don't feel like she was processed anything she smelled it was instinct, like there was instinctual like there's danger, something's not right. I have to address this issue. There was no and and being five yards, but I don't have to exaggerate the distance where or no. I know five yards very well. And for people unaware, you know that talk about running away from bears and stuff, bears running thirty plus, like that's that's a leap, you know a way that the bears can just they're insane. That's fast. You'd be in five yards from the hood of a car and somebody flooring it. You're taking a gonna jump out of the way. They could cover a let's see, five yards and in a millisecond really well at top speed. So yeah, I took a little bit longer than that, but in real time, like that's a second, really, and how long I mean you're when you're processing you see the bear, you're processing it, it's moments until it charges you. I mean no, no, it was almost instantaneous. Like I said, I stood up and and I did take a step back because it once it immediately click, which is you know, probably a millisecond. She probably as soon as I stood up, probably smelled me or whatever, and it took her probably a millisecond to just a turn. So I don't really know that the time wise there, but I just knew there was no she didn't. She wasn't standing up. There was no like snore, there was no like you know, kind of bluffing beefing up. It was just like like it startled her, you know, scared, and she's like, what is this that just really snuck up behind me because just by her head turn, she was facing downhill, and in my suspicion as while these other guys she's probably hunting the same milk. We were like, I wanted, you know, something to do with whether she was going to hunt them or like you know, cap lies on something else. She was there for a reason, like right near the elk, and she was just hunkered down and the older either sneaking weight making her way through, or just like waiting. And so when I came up behind her, was sheer surprise. So of course instinctively immediately yelled out there and instinctively was pulling my rifle up. I ripped the scope cover off and started presenting, you know, my rifle, and I knew, I'm like, this isn't gonna happen, and this is the first time, and I've I've shot it a few times now. But I got a new uh a new rifles six five creed More, and I was really excited about it because it was insanely light. My goal is I really like guns, and I huge protram like I just love shooting in general, but I built this specifically to be extremely light, like the lightest rifle I have. The whole thing with five rounds is less than six pounds, so it's like a toothpick. You know you're pulling it. So it's so great, you know, great, gonna be great for goats and future out kinds and everything else. But of course it's not gonna take down to bear, never in a million years. Every it's for people who don't know. It's just a little little teeny tiny round like it's it's goes shoot fast and straight, and it's going to take a lot of shot placement, but it's it doesn't have a lot of power, and especially for a bear. And I knew it. My note, I'm like, okay, if I get the hip shot, if anything off, it's just gonna piss her off. It's not gonna take you down. Then I'm gonna take five pounds to the face and the body and just I'll end up like one of those stories. And all of this is just turning my mind. And I knew it. Started raising it, threw it down, and then I just Superman down the hill. And of course when I say that, it's like, yeah, it's a little bit of a drop, but I'm not really going anywhere, and uh, I just kind of jumped in the alders and covered up my head and neck as best I could and again no concept of time, but it felt like I didn't even hit the ground and she was already on me. She had a bite in the back of my leg, high up on my right leg, just just below my ass, and she picked me up just by that and just threw me. Threw me over that same like rock like kind of terrain features that I was kind of falling down. I fall on my head. She's just kind of like just throwing me around like a rag doll. She picks me up and as I'm falling, she's trying to rebite me, and she she bites me in the nuts and I'm kind of like head down, face down. I just feel top too, canines like going into the taint and like that's not good, like fall and she's just bite me in the leg like traveling on the leg, bites me real hard, almost like kind of behind the knee. At this point, unfortunately, like the guys were Johnny on the spot, of course, this is just like second stances are happening and the guy do you remember screaming or yeah I did on the first one. But it's it's funny, you know, training dogs. I think I had a lot to do it. And when you train dogs like for for bite working stuff. Uh, it drives them just like when they stay of the animals, like the whole playing dead thing and actually has a lot of true behind it because it is it's just kind of like this instinctual prey that when you do bite or when they bite, like when you scream, it just drives them even more to buy the hardest. The first when I yelled out and I'm like like that was obviously making things way worse, and I'm like, okay, this is it. It's like this is gonna suck. It's gonna be really really bad. And even when I dove, like I knew that, like there's no protecting myself. It is fully relying on everybody else around me to take over this point, I'm like, okay, here's trusting the boys, like I know they know their ship, like this is it. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just I never let go. Was like just head you know, our hands behind the head and neck and uh you know, I kind of got a gash in my eye from just getting thrown into some older or something at some point. But I'm like, yeah, I'm not letting go like this is you know, this is all I got like to to hold onto and um, right when she was stolen the leg she uh, the guy above me took a shot, you know, and uh you know as he tells it too, obviously we all collect their own stories after the vent and uh he he didn't hear what I said. None of them did. Like they're all like somewhat close by, but they just they couldn't make out what I said, like I was yelling bear, but I just said at once and then I was you know, mauled, and they just heard the scream and then they heard all the growling and then then you know, immediately immediately new So all I did is get up over the cliff and he peered down. He had to kind of make a judgment call at that point because I couldn't see me, like the bears just like engulfed on me, like couldn't seem at all. Made a judgment call and putting you know, hiring her back. And wherever that bullet ended up, I don't know. But fortunately it didn't end up me. And and you know I would have done the same thing, Like I'm thankful he did it and I didn't kill her, you know, it just kind of piste her off and not a fear and anger. She beat me again, like kind of clawing on my back at this point and backpack definitely stone st I even told calls like hey man, like I know you know that all those guys like let him know. I was like, definitely saved my ass um and I got a few claw marks on my back, but no, it definitely took some took some heavies and uh save me. But she you know, kind of got uh to the side and then sunk one into my arm pretty good, and uh then the second shot went out just she just reloaded really quick quick put another one in or had a little bit better shot then and that one dropped her, you know, kind of at that point heard her enough. I heard a very distinct moan, kind of that kill shot type type deal, and she fell kind of on top of me, but a little bit of the side to not really engulfed me. And ironically it was I was a little more nervous at that point, even not being bit because she was right there. I was more nervous about my my the back of my head and neck because I couldn't see her at all. I'm kind of on my left side, you know, with my hands behind my head and neck and looking up the hill with you the two other guys that were with me, um when we split up, and uh, all I could see was or all I could just feel is just her and like I could hear the breath, like I feel the firm like, oh god, I'm I just don't bite me, Like that's all I kept think. I was like, all right, I'm hoping that bite doesn't come like on my head or something. Unfortunately, she started kind of crawling away. She was obviously really hurting at that point and uh barely kind of stumbling crawling away. I couldn't see her. I was just still faced uphill. But the other guy that was um with me and the other one when we split up, he ran down the hill and he had a glock uh twenty on him with a ten mill, and uh, he just kind of got to me, pulled out the clock, ran by me and just dumped a mag you know, just dumping Magan and finished rock make sure she'd be gonna come after us anymore. And Um, immediately at that point is when I just started taking the backpack off on, zipping clothing, like trying to get things, couldn't move my leg at all at this point. It was just I knew that was the worst of it. And a little side note on this one, Unfortunately I was completely unaware of what I found out afterwards is when they took that first shot is uh you know, put when her in her in her back, they saw a cub of the older. So of course, like I've told everybody, was like not having the experience that I do with bears, which is pales and compared to something some to some people of course, but they're not aggressive, they're not nasty. It's like ave been around Stiles and Cause before and just keep your distance. But with the conditions the way they were, with the heavy rains and the winds, like a come up on her and definitely surprised her. She was probably hunting territorial and she had a cub. It's like, there's no no, you know, I mean, it's perfect. That's the perfect storm lack of a better term. And her height and protective instincts, like any surprised she knows the cub and it sounds the covers below her. Probably Yeah, so yeah, you were you know, so you it was you her and the cub. Yeah, I never saw the cup at all. You know, it was completely out of my site and out of my mind. But motionally, when people folks think about bear attacks, they're thinking about this situation. So cub, yeah it is. It's definitelyly you know, the worst mama mama bearon and cubs like that's what you don't want to mess with. And it's like that's that's the most precarious when you're getting around that type of situation and say, Okay, this isn't just a bear like with some fish, and like you know, it's like you're gotta be more cautious and definitely make it aware that you don't want anything to do with them. How long do you think the the attack lasted? No idea like only seconds, Like I would say, probably still under a minute. Um for sure that the whole ordeal is probably still only like a minute. And that's that's hard to say too. It's a totally different world. Um. Been in plenty of kind of flow type states in my life. We've been under a lot of stress and uh, and I don't know, people always ask me too, is like did you pass out? It might not. I didn't pass out, And I think the adrenaline took over in a lot of ways that I wasn't in a lot of pain initially either. A lot of it was just like a really really heightened sense of what was going on. It wasn't the sense where I was like, okay, I didn't know what was gonna you know, what I was doing or anything. I just knew that my best situation for survival is just being extremely keen on everything going on, and and like even as the bites are happy, I'm kind of thinking to myself like, Okay, I know what those wounds could be, like the worst case scenario, like what it is, like, Okay, here, that's what I'm gonna have to do afterwards. The treat you're thinking practically, yeah, I wasn't thinking I'm like, oh this is it, this is in the end. You weren't thinking about your friends, your family, like it really wasn't. I was just thinking like this situation as it is just really really in the moment, and as everything was going on so naturally. Again, as soon as that the other guy that had the pistol like ran by me. That's initially it was my first thought was like, okay, the the you know, the battles over it's it's it's one, it's done, it's taken care of. Now it's like, okay, we gotta gotta treat this. Um. Everything that's going on with me, And I knew the other guys had the same process, like they're figuring everything out, and um, did you you know during during the attack, you remember any distinctive sounds or smells or things that that paying your memory back to that. I certainly remember the growling and everything the bear was making. Um, that's unquestionable. Um. Fortunately there was no like gnarly bone breaks training that I had to endure or hear, or crunching or anything like that. It was just her and I remember kind of the snorts and the breathing and the smells. No, I you know, I know that sounds kind of funny because I know smells are some of the biggest It's it's the number one sent that recalls memory. And No, I don't really have a lot of smells, probably because there wasn't a whole lot besides some moisture in there, you know, for me to smell um, given the conditions and the winds, and probably the same reason why she didn't smell me either, And that's all I can think of. But yeah, I hadn't really thought about the smells too much, but but just hear the impact of her teeth and yeah, no certainly felt it and um and and new but it was, uh, you know, definitely kind of surreal. And it's it's weird because whenever I think back upon it, too, is kind of different visions of the same thing. Not necessarily PTSD or anything, but I definitely uh think back on it and different points of view of being in the first person and also in third person just like experienced the same thing. So it's kind of unique. But um, yeah, quite quite the experience there. The the treatment portion in itself was um, pretty funny too. One of the um so the other two after everything happening, you know, they finished. I definitely had to get to it because it is kind of funny. And I've got a really good bunch of group group of guys with me, and one of them has some pretty good medical experiences he's had in his past, and um, he came over and everybody's kind of getting the reduction in a row, so to speak, and delegating stuff out and uh, guys are reloading because they're also We're also thinking, hey, the cub or multiple cubs could still be around, Like, doesn't mean they can't come back. Like cub can mess you up just as well as you know, MoMA bear could, especially when it might be you know, ticked off the protective of mom embarrass The guys were you know, very weary of that as well, but fortunately never never saw the cub. And uh, they immediately just start breaking out the UM SATH phone, Dorman reaches and getting on those and uh Dorman reached, they activated, the SS beacon was on it and UM guys are getting on the STATH phone making phone calls. So as this was happening, you know, as I said, I'm taking off my clothing it as a kid, just like unzipping stuff and then trying to get stuff out. And I had my AID kit and I'm telling them where that is, and and they were using their own AID kits as well. And the guy that was working on me, he's, you know, starts to get his shears out and he's cutting all the clothing off on me and uh and trying to get at the wounds. And immediately when he came up to me, I told him like, hey, I needed trying to get on my right leg. Um, just practice that we've done before, because I knew that the leg took the worst, and I was nervous about any type of like heavy artery damage it could be and um, certainly where the wounds were. Fortunately that wasn't the case, but it still could have been under the circumstances, especially couldn't move my legs. So was there a lot of blood? I mean there was significant, but really there wasn't. Um certainly not enough to put me in the shock or anything. Just you know, a fair bit of blood just from you know, there's trauma. But but of course I'm like wearing you know, uh, one set of pants and then rain pants and then gators and then boots, so everything is kind of covering everything so you can't really see these sides. Just a bunch of puncture wounds everywhere, like holes in the clothing. So once he starts cutting everything off, he's kind of sees him rolls me over and he say, okay, we can take the turniquet off because like it was good. We're just gonna pack this. The blood is not that bad. And uh, I was like and the only thing going through my head is because I've had some training with tourniquets and stuff before, Like, Okay, we're gonna go real slow because I don't I want to lose my leg because it's happened before where guys have taken tourniquets off too fast and that rush of blood back into the appendage. Well, just that's how you lose one. So a little nervous on that point. But we're kind of we're going through and he's looking at the wounds like, Okay, they're not that bad, and I'm trying to point out other wounds, but I knew that the leg was the worst. But as soon as you kind of get through it, I'm like, hey, I'm like, but it I need you to I need you to look at my taint. I'm like, I'm like, I know because I remember that. And I was like, oh no, oh no, I was laughing. I was just saying I'm telling you, like I'll have to show you pictures afterwards. But I was going through the moment of it and I'm like, okay, no, homo here, but I really needs you to check my taint and he's like okay, it's like you know, you know, and does it pulls up my you know, underwear, but it's kind of underneath and he looks and he's like, no, you're good, button my okay, but I knew something was wrong, like it doesn't feel right, and he you know, kind of goes back, uh you know through looking, you know, cutting off other pieces of clothing, and uh I might know. I man like something right, I needs you to I need to really, So he cuts off the pants like to my underwear at least this point, and like lift up the underwear and even before you can see the underwear or just a hole in it with just blood everywhere, and like, damn it. So it lifts it up and like yep, I'm like just looking down like just as you know, looking at underneath minor where I'm like, yep, there it is. There's my testicle hanging out like great, and uh you know he sees it. Two it's like okay, and uh you know, I just reached down like I gotta put that back in, pretending like that never happened, dude. And uh so then of course that's all that was on my mind. I'm like, gosh, damn it. I'm like you gotta be shipping me. And I'm also like still where. I'm like, okay, I know my arm in my back is kind of messed up. I'm like, okay, here's one here, and I'm like I tell him he cuts it off. He's like, yeah, okay, I see it. And you know they're packing those wounds as well, and but it's still in my min. I'm like, hey, does anybody have any like a sock or something I can sub down there? Like again, so still it's hatched though. Oh it was you know, like little nunchucks, you know, hanging out. Baby, still down there, still good, but so you felt like it's attached. Yeah, it's like it's gotta be's still good, and there's just been like a you know, like the bubbles burst. Yeah, and I'm like, man, I know guys have like bisectomies and stuff, but like it doesn't come out. They just like reached in there and you know, make a little snip snip and it's good, you know, cut the little whatever it is down there, vas difference whatever it is. And uh, I'm like, oh man, you gotta be kidding me. And so of course it was on my mind. I'm nervous about it coming back out, and so I'm like I was asking he didn't get it like a soccer something I just didn't wanted to pop out, like what I'm getting moved around and stuff. I'm like, gosh, damn it bandana or yeah, exactly something. It's like, yeah, it's like it's it's in the underwear, like it's good, like not gonna focus on it, but of course I'm focused on it, and uh, the jokes just start coming out of me, like guys like, don't worry about it, man, you need one, like you still have kids, like really like lighthearted guys. And I'm just laughing. Honestly, I wasn't really good spirits to the whole thing, like he wasn't gonna die. I knew nothing bad was gonna happen. I'm laughing too, and we're cracking jokes and really, you know, barely made it out. You know, it's many bare jokes as you can make a meedily. And it just started sitation hay situation, and uh it was great. But I know they found some little scary strip type things and put that on there. And of course you know, if you have any type of organs are about, you're not supposed to put him back in. So that was also kind of a thing. I'm like, I'm gonna that's okay, I'll put him back in, Like I don't want that thing just hanging around, Willy nilly. I'm putting that back. It's going in against the medical advice. I'm putting it back in. Alright, there's there's no that just yeah, I hope. I was like, I never want anybody to experience that, because that's not a fun feeling just seeing it, like hanging out as a podcast host speechless, right, yeah, continue, I have nothing to add to the conversation. There's nothing I can say. So it's at this point I'm kind of patched up and the guys are getting out there, you know, puff Jacketson's lating Jacketson trying to cover me back up because I'm essentially kind of naked on one half of my body and given the conditions, it was pretty brutal. And I gotta say, with the whole experience, that was certainly the worst part was just in during the cold. And I'm certainly no stranger to cold, uh living up there, being from Maine before that and doing a lot of type of outdoor training, um and having experiences I know, the cold but that when I was just Jack Camery, it was it was hard going, UM waiting on the coach guard, which we had gotten in contact with UM via the SAT phone. So how quickly, how quickly to the wounds are dressed as well as they could, the testicles back in its place. Everything is is you guys feel like stable at this point? How quickly did that happen until you were making those calls and expecting the rescue? So, UM, we're on the bird. We had no idea what to expect with them as time wise in how soon that they would get there, UM getting spun up. It's it's not a long flight like it's only like I want to say, fifty minutes for them to fly UM from the base to a to a fog neck as we talked about them before. That's a scary thing just because the weather you don't know, it changed so quickly exactly, and and they were the cloud cover had kind of lifted. It wasn't as low as it had been earlier in the day, so that was certainly a blessing, but it still wasn't great conditions by any means either, And of course they still had to find us. But we were walking them on. Guys were Johnny on the spot with grid coordinates, um, passing them like Latin long whenever they needed it in and UH got them to coordinates and and walked him on there. But I did want to touch out on on one piece because you mentioned earlier and that was a learning point for us. Is the dorm in reach, So the in reach SUS button reactivated it. Nobody is like the dolrum en Reach is a it's a EPs slash you know, GPS communicator that you can text on. I use it to text my wife still stay in good graces when I'm on. And on the side of it, there's an s O S button. You can peel back this this plastic you know, rubb recovering and push this SOS button that's supposed to send a signal out a beacon and um, something happened bad, come get me exactly. That's it. And you know we use it for the primary reason, just like you said, texting is one of the biggest things. When we're off there, we can't text any other means and we're not gonna waste minutes in time on the SAT phone. So it's been great for that. However, we never really knew what the sus do, you know, like for somebody comes save me, know, save our souls. You know, that's literally what it is. And we activated unfortunately had the SAT or the SAT phone with us, but when we activated it, come to find out afterwards, the State troopers got it first. Um talk to State trooper when I was in the hospital and he's like, yeah, it's like they got the call first. By the time they got the call, didn't really know what it was. They just knew was some sort of emergency beacon. No idea this situation. I think it gives him uh GPS coordinate and it just tells him something bad has happened. That's pretty much it. And probably the user name, I think, whatever his information is it because it wasn't my my dorm and just somebody else's mine was just bright exactly. And so that went out and by the time they had any inclination of what was going on what it was, Coast Guards already spent up on our way. So saw like they were really you know, quick to react like that they were because we had him on the SAT without a set phone, then it would have been like okay, they would have had to call the coast guard. The coast guard would have had no idea what was going on. They would have had reached out on the Dolorum, you know, and and I don't know if that's by a textile that would go down or or what, but it would have been a little bit different, maybe even longer. And uh so as this was going down, um, I'm just gonna, you know, sitting there waiting at this point, there's nothing else to do. Guys that weren't on the comms piece, we're just kind of cutting branches because we knew, you know, getting a burden. They're gonna come lift me out, and so they're just kind of cutting down branches in the area trying to clear you know, pave away couldn't really move. Um, I I think, you know, given different circumstances, I didn't have another bunch of guys around me, and if I was, so, it would have been just a jilacious stray like who knows would have what or could have happened, you know, But fortunately that was not the case. The other two guys and other two guys your hunting parties still don't know this is going on, or you know, they were with us the other two that was separate. They heard all the commotions, so they came up. Yeah, it was it was that guy or one of the two that actually he came up and he was one of treating my wounds all together. Yeah, everybody's yeah, everybody pitched in and it was the other guy from the other party that he uh, um was on the sat phone and he was doing that piece. So kind of everybody's you know, finding a job, doing something at this point, like I said, really really text but couldn't went down any ever any better. What's far But he's doing, you know, a job or looking for something to do. And uh yeah, at that point in time, it was just sitting wait and they're talking to him on the bird and bird comes in and um, you know, hoist the guy down first. And he kind of comes and assesses me and ask me questions and I'm completely coherent answering him good spirits, YadA, YadA YadA, checking everything over. They come up with a plan of action to get the litter down and then put me on the litter and then uh and hoist me up. Um. The whole process definitely took longer than I would have liked. I think it I don't. I know the incident happened right around one ten. I think it's in the attack happened and I didn't have a chance check my watch and everything. The hospital they took it all off, but uh it was like roughly from what I heard about two and a half hours later that I was actually at the hospital. So blessing going out to the coast guards. Still save my but that definitely if it was a fatal wound, like you know, there's no question there's been a fatal wound, and the well out of the golden hour like one hour period, we're like, okay, you know my life might have been safe, So still save my ass um wasn't too happy about their their hoist camera that they have so on there. Uh they're they're helicopter. They have they have a hoist camera like going right down the cable like where it's lefting me up and immediately immediately as soon as it went down, like they had that camera footage of hoisting me up, you know, off the ground and posted on Facebook like social media. So I love the coach guards still saying my ask, but they immediately posted that so for what a reason, I don't know, for their own reason, like hey, you know save the hiker, you know hunter or whatever, you know, uh from from and again like I give it to him percent. It's like, hey, you know, I would absolutely give them, you know, the save the rescue and good for them. But I was kind of like, man, to post it immediately. It made me and other guys more upset because I had other guys you know that I know, and they were out in the field and or you know, outside of of work, and they found out through Facebook before they found out from guys like phone calls like hey, you know, uh guy just got mauled, you know whatever, else, like through any anything else. And uh fortunately my my folks didn't find out that way, you know, I called and when I got to hospital. But I'm kind of like, that's that's pretty much. That's pretty messed up to do it, you know, so so soon. And I'm like, yeah, it didn't make me happy, and I do want to give him the rescue everything else, but I was like, man, that's pretty unprofessional. As far as I would agree with that wholeheartedly, like marketing their ability. Yeah, and and again I'm not against them doing that. They do a lot of things. They're like they are. The biggest base you know, is in Kodiak for the coach guard, and rightfully so they save a lot a lot of Yeah, all props for the life saving efforts. But come on, sin, come on streamline that social process. But yeah, it's was there moments in the waiting because you know, we talked about like sounds and smells of of the attack, right, but are there are moments in the waiting to be rescued? Um in air quotes, I guess where things started to settle in your mind as to what happened or was it still a tactical you know, I gotta get out of here. I need to stay alive. I need to get you know what. You you obviously weren't given any duties. You had to you know, lay there, be warm and be stable survive. So during that time, do you remember your mind drifting to any particular things other than you know, I was pretty focused in a moment still, Um No, I never. I don't know. I'm a very determined, focused kind of individual, and guys that know me know the same thing that I I definitely don't let anybody tell me how things are gonna go or how I'm gonna live my life or how things gonna turn out or odds or anything like that really kind of drives me and forces me to work even harder. So the only thoughts going through my mind is like, okay, cool, well, I wonder how long this is gonna take before him back to doing the same old things I'm gonna be doing. Like nothing in my mind was like, oh I'm limp biscuit now. Besides like the jokes of like, hm, I wonder if I can have kids, but I'm single, Like I don't have a girlfriend, you know, no wife, no kids, anybody else. It's like it's like, you know what, if I'm gonna approve this, I'm gonna prove it. You know however many years down the road, like if that's even gonna happen. So uh yeah, the only thing going through my mind is like, all right, I wonder how long it's gonna take me out of the picture, you know. Just yeah, I'm just kind of like, okay, what's next? Like I survived like none whatsoever, and I was just I was really really proud. I guess of the guys, that would mean I guess all right. Brad Jason Man the myth still still here, still alive, a little banged up, doing just fun. And so we got one more bear attack to go through. Now, Phil, this is the the only one you were a part of. In the recording, I would say, back to back here we have the most talked about podcasts and in the history of the show, right back to back, one being Brad's bear attack and to being Dr Barry Gilbert's appearance on the show. Would you agree with the second? Um? So where? But I was wondering if if it made sense to include this here, because really, what we were talking about after the Barry Gilbert interview was not the bear attack. It was all the other things that happened after the bar Tach story. And you know what happened after the bar Tach story was crazy because we had a man here who had half his face mauled by a bear, and after he left, I don't think we talked about his bar attack story at all. And so that's why when I was looking at what we would do for this best of I wanted to make sure we got his bear attack story in there and just that. It's because honestly, it's a good story. It's a great story, and it's a. It's kind of a bummer that that that ended up not being the the takeaway from the show. It is a bit of a bummer, but we still appreciate the story. Um, even if the show didn't go right after this this happened, it didn't go the way that we thought it might go. So I wanted to make sure we just we This is another great example of you know what not to do in the outdoors as far as how you go through bear country, but also in Barry's case, just you're just a little bit unlucky. Um. And you'll you'll hear the you'll hear the similarities. There's pretty stark the similarities between Brad's story and Barry's story. And so listen to those, listen for those parallels, and appreciate a story for what it is. And again he he uses a very sink language. He says, I charged the bear. I charged the bear. And he's doing that very deliberately, um, and for obvious reasons. He's an advocate for for bears. And so just listen to that language, listen to Barry and enjoy his story of his attack in Yellowstone some thirty years ago. I guess I grew up on an older road, Mr Barry Gil But how are you, sir? Very good? Nice to them. Yeah, how are you enjoying your Bozeman times thus far? It's been great. I'm staying up in the Mountain zeesa town, and uh, it's a really nice wild country. I'm gonna be going down to Yellowstone a couple of days too, so I'll be good. Can never get enough of that country. So well. Welcome to the media studios and and to the Hunting Collective. Thanks for coming and really appreciate your time. Uh. I don't think I would guess that a lot of our listeners are unaware of your story, which I'm I'm glad to kind of go through it in detail. Yes, it was. I was attacked forty two years ago, and it's in my book that I just written, called one of us a biologist walk among bears. I'll get my plug in ear but trained professional. Yeah, I started out with grizzly bear work, trying to work on human their interactions, how people were affecting bears in uh Yellowstone and Uh I was out with a graduate student, UM ten miles from the nearest road up the Indian Creek Trail, near a big horn pass and Uh, I saw grizzly bears in the morning when we get up through im six o'clock, and they were so far away that I suggested my student we take a big circle around uh the bears and bush whack up a distant ridge which was at nine th two hundred feet. The long and the short was that he stopped for a nature call, and I went over the ridge and stayed lowd so I wouldn't get help barking when they saw me on the skyline, and I was hunched over and moving swiftly so I wouldn't be up there on the skyline. And unfortunately I charged their lying and at Steve dead and it was a female with cuts, and she didn't think much of that. In fact, she came out need like a three train with their claws hitting the ground and put me in the hospital for two months. He basically took off the side of my face, my nose and ears and scout me and I ended up with shortly short of a thousand stitches in my head. But I had a magnificent rescue. I told them not to kill that there. It was something that I did in a surprise encounter with the baddest function, and uh I went back. Within a couple of years, my student went to the Assamity to study h easier easier going there's and he got a good master's thesis out of that. And uh I got an opportunity I think it was four or five years later to go to Captain National Park where now upwards of fifty or sixty round theirs come down onto salmon streams and there are five hundred, six hundred people a day walking along them. When I started the research in uh it was of course a time of fewer interactions, but they still knew that the bears were being bumped off the river. And I designed to study two, gather very detailed data voute there numbers on the river and people numbers through the day and through the week. From Dontell dusk we did sampling four hours. Yeah, the lot to unpack there when you rushed through some stuff I want to definitely cover. I mean, it's seven when the attack occurred, and you say, forty two years now from that time, and obviously so much of your life has kind of been defined by by that moment. When you you know, when you look back on that day, Um, there's so much to go through. But I thought the most amazing part as I'm reading your story and people can read it, and one of us, um, and I was reading your stories as you've written, you're talking about the rescue. You know, a thousand suitures, you're basically scalped, You're you're losing a bunch of blood. And then how you rescued that day. Can we go through that, you know, the moment that that your your student Bruce found you and then and then called this in and that all plays very interesting to me. Yeah, the short story, there's a whole chapter. Actually, the second chapter is thenardless rescue I had, Uh we had a park service really oh and my student picked that up and got onto the main channel with the park service. They shut down the whole communication system just to talk to us, and uh and uh, my students said that I was badly enough injured. Well, he asked me how I was, and I occurred in the gargled I'm okay, I think I'm I'm still alive. But then I thought, Bruce, tell him I'm dying, because I really was dying. I was bleeding out right there. And uh, they launched a small nash type helicopter. They found a pilot downtown shopping, Jim Thompson. Yeah, Nartilus guy. Uh and he got in this sort of rickety uh uh helicopter that was losing its supercharger and he's coming in at nine thousand feet trying to pick up a guy in a windstorm, I mean the air out there, and he couldn't land next to me anyway. He landed in the small valley next door. Uh. And he brought with him Tom Black, who was the leader of the rescue operations. And Uh. Tom realized when he saw me with Jim that they needed some serious help there. So they called smoke jumpers from West Jellostone smoke jump Base and UH, a d C three launched from there with eight smoke jumpers who dropped packages right almost hit me. Uh and uh. The guys did a Nartilus job getting me stabilized, and they took me down to Lake Hospital, which was maybe twenty minutes by chopper and uh lo and behold, the University Utah Medical Center had rotated in for Vietnam Toronto surgeons who were just going up for a couple of weeks at a clinic. And so these guys had seen people blown apart by shrapnel and all kinds of nasty wounds, and they further stabilized me, and then the ambulance took me out to West Yellowstone Airport and a salt Lake had sent up a basically a flying operating room and got me down and they started working on me at eleven clock at night and and eleven hour surgery closing all those wounds. And of course then you gotta beat the infections. Infections. Every time we talk about bear attacks, that's that's the thing that you try to talk about, is when we have an open wound that was caused by an animal. They've got one filthy mouth and they can't and you can't really just close that wind right back up. I was just colored with toods. Yeah, I can laugh now it's sort of a gallows humler, but it was nippin talk. I my attempt at Sturre in the hospital kept going out around a hundred before you know, I could have clocked out right then right there. Do you ever do you think of moments during during I'm sure what was kind of like a and very intense and very wild whirlwind to get out of there, to get. You know, there's some serendipity involved with with your medical care too. It was there moments in there where you thought, you know, this is this is it for me? Are you dying or or the end of the research, either one both. Just I'm interested in moments during that time. That's a good question. I don't dwell on that, and I don't like to talk publicly too much about it, but uh, you know, you get a TV producer stick of candle in your face and Dr Gilder, how did you feel when you lost your face and you thought you were going to die in your family is going to be without a husband, and I thought, you know, f you us of those kind of things. But I realized that I was close to death. And one day in the hospital, I was watching television and I saw turtle walk across on the television screen and I started to cry and I couldn't stop crying. I knew I was going to live. So yeah, there you go. I choke them out the already years later, but we're not gonna We're not gonna go. I just wanted to, you know, kind of just understand a little bit of well, And it's a reasonable question because then the next one is, well, how the heck did you decide to go back and study even bigger? There's exactly and when you're it's it's hard to And again we were talking before this we I know, with this podcast and with our company or to meetia or we were a media company, and we know we look at the numbers, we look at what people want to hear about, and when we talk about bear attacks, more people listen, more people pay attention. Yeah, and we don't you know, I'm not gonna base our audience to say it's just a sensationalist part of it, but there is some version of that intrigue for well, you know, there's a lot of both ignorance and fear, and that's very normal. I don't say that to thee the jarw towards people, but if we really want to fear something, we had to fear the automo deal it. It kills and names more people. And you can go on YouTube or whatever and see got people's arms with their watch still on, and that there's torn and pieces. You don't see that with automobiles. All that sort of stuff happens and you don't get visuals of it. Actually, my wife as I was going out hunting not too long a couple of weeks ago. She said, are there gonna be bears? Are you gonna get attacked? And there's been bear tax recently. I said, I'm more. It's more dangerous for me to drive over to the hunting spot because I I up in there than it is to actually out there. And I believe. I believe that solely, and I don't let my personal beliefs. I can't let that inherent there's danger and inherited everything, and to sensationalize one version of it because it seems a little bit more visceral, a little bit more scary, it's just not intellectually honest for me. So I just try to sing with everything. Only the sociologists could tell us why we're so obsessed with carnal the words attacking people. Maybe it's a control thing, but look at the numbers of people have been dying from OTIOI. It's seven hundred thousand people. Yet to Grizzly there attacks will get held a lot more pressed than all these deaths of fine young people that are on a drug that shouldn't be on the market. Yeah, you know that that they're those comparisons are they're pretty stark when you start to think about how, like you said, one, we've We've had, like I said, four bear attacks in the Gravelly Mountain range here in south of Bosman recently, and when I was traveling around prior to Elk opening day, we had more. I had more conversations with hunters that I know in the industry and without the industry that about grizzly bears and I did about Elk. We weren't talking about like what else did you see? What bull were you on? We're talking about are there grizzly bears in your area? And the other thing about hunters is some of them have the John Wayne neath that if they've got a three fifty seven magnum or something, they'll be stopped in that there. Believe me, you won't be stopping there with a pistol. Your arms will be jumping like like your heart, it'll be trying to get out of your chest. And unless you've had combat training, Uh, if you really wanted to find yourself with something like a short barrel shotgun or a pistol, go to a garbage don't get one of your friends to roll a truck. Tire down at you from the hill and you stop that truck dire tire with a with a pistol or a shotgun. And if you can stand there and stop that remaining cool, you'd be okay with killing it there. But who wants to kill of there? You spray? I'm I'm a believer. I think the studies of it are are sufficient. Uh. People always say, well, it doesn't work every time. Well, of course it doesn't work every time. Uh, skunks developed pretty good bear spray and they still get eaten. So you know, Uh, but it's it'll blind and make the air's choke and filler lungs. And people say, oh, well the window blow back. No it won't. It's got so much pressure with that gas it'll just go out. Uh. You know, I've shown people how to use it lots of times. I'm a believer. But you know, the unknown aspect of it is that when you stand there with your weapon there spray, your behavior is tells that there that you're not a chicken. If you don't have a bear spray, your instinct is to run, which I did, because you have to get some distance. Maybe you can collapse, maybe you can wet your pants. But uh, if you're holding their spray, you're standing facing the bear, and of course you have to believe it's gonna work, which it does. Then the bear says, hell, no, I was just wanted to chase you, but I don't want to fight you. You and what choice you like? You said, what choices? When you're facing down a bear like that, There's a lot of things you can say you would do, but until you've been in that situation, I'm I would like to say. You know, we were talking about this, uh one of our editors outside early today, when we were thinking about you coming in, I was saying, like carrying a pistol, we all think, oh, we'll do it. It's just what I'd like to have both rather than just one. I was thinking of, and it's something I had never really considered, is that I feel safer with a pistol in my hand than I do bear spray, just innately, justaure, I feel the pistols more powerful, So I'm probably gonna reach that for before I reach for bear spray. But to your point, and I've I've shot three gun matches in different competitions where in practice I can hit you know, I can hit a pretty I can hit the ten ring with the pistol. And then when somebody's behind me timing me and their fifteen other people watching, and I've got to run up to a thing and shoot there's any pressure applied. I am the most inaccurate person that you could ever So to try to even compare to that, which is, you know, tangibly comparable to the moment of frenzy when there's a bear, you know, coming down, and I think it's it's it's difficult to do well, you know. I was on the ground with there's a lot and and we did some darting for collering for the ladge owner. I don't do any callering myself for my projects, but whenever I was out on the ground, I carried a shotgun pump mossburg with you know, slugs and uh deer shot buckshot, and I I figured always carried their spray, and their spray was the first reach for me. I'm not a I'm a gun guy, but I'm not a hundred a big game. Uh. I figure that I might have to use the shotgun to shoot him there off my student. I want to backups. I want their spray and then if the bear's got them down, I can walk up and plug them in the head or the neck or the shoulders or do whatever you can. You know, you're running on instinct there. They don't have their shooting classes like they have sailboat classes. You know, yes, would be difficult. And I know FWP for some time they had a trailer they would pull around that had a charging bear saying and they would say that that woman is speaking tonight, yeah, at at the Lendley Center, just before I give the talk. Yeah. So like then they would do bear spray training and I don't want to get the number one, but it was a very small percentage of people that could get the bear spray and effectively get it in the air before that bear, that charging fake bear. We're talking milliseconds they're decides to charge, uh, standing facing and hoping to god, uh that it's a bluff charge and you can change your underwear later, you know. And I'm I was telling you before. I'm an East Coast kid. We just didn't I never had to think about this hunting my entire life or even going outside for any reason. And now I've got a small son three years old. Every basically every time I hunt in the national forest around here, in any public lands there are there is the chance, even sometimes it's more remote than others. Other times it's more elevated than others. But they're always is a chance that I'm going to run into a grizzly bear. Always, and it's a different feeling. And that's why we love the wilderness. You think that they're out of it, it's not the same wilderness exactly, you know exactly that we say I always say, like you, if you would remove and we've done this as a as a nation, like removed the predators, predators from the environment with the elk. The elk aren't elk anymore if they're not being preyed upon by these things that have have chased them. So their elkness has derived somehow by their instincts that are elevated by evolved the wolves, cougars, whatever. So you know, the way we think of elk is is very much informed by the you know, our prong horn is faster than any carnivore. It evolved with a with a North American cheetah, which was a lion that they found in sinkholes and uh and why only, which is really interesting there are tho pronghorn at one time, they're six. I forget which some double horned and all that sort of stuff. But there's only one left. But that baby can run, you know, nothing can catch that an. Isn't it really interesting? So I studied them for two years. Yeah, it was wonderful. And Yellowstone mostly sent marketing. It was sort of technical stuff, but I just loved going out watching pronghorn behavior. Yeah, they're interesting. Well, one thing like during you know, during the attack that you already mentioned, but I wanted to return to um in the hours after the attack, when when things are pretty dire, you wrote that you said that you asked that the bear not be destroyed. That's the quote. One of the range of how many bears they had killed, and that I could. I can remember that they sort of anger welling up and he's saying, please don't do that, don't track this there they knew it went downhill. Bloody footprints our downhill. I never saw the dave that. Of course, I didn't see anything after that, but I have color slides there rescued because the helicopter pilot grabbed my thirty five million camera and took pictures, which is crazy, that is. Yeah. Yeah, I think the stories as I was reading, A Love of your rescuers were as interesting as anything the people that they were, isn't that. Yeah. Jim Compson did a wonderful job describing and I quoted him completely uh in the book because he talked about he'd been two tours in Vietnam and that day he had more adrenaline pumping than on any any operation in Vietnam. So uh. And he isn't a guy that exaggerates easily. I guess I grew up on an older All right, that's it. That's all Philip. Another episode in the books, episode we are the substitute teacher showing you a movie. No, in all seriousness, I am likely again, I'm speaking to you in the future tense. I'm speaking to you future Phil m M. And I'm assuming that you in the future are very happy that I've had my child. I am. And since i'm future fill I've uploaded my consciousness into the computers down slowing down, Skywalker. So right, you're actually speaking to a computer right now, left my body. I can't wait till we get an ai Phil, and I don't have to deal with the real Phil because it is getting it's really it's so much nicer. It's really bad. We can send you off into space or whatever. Um, I'm assuming that I'm having my child right now, that I'm not connected. My plan at this point, even speaking to my future self. My plan at this point, it's just disconnect from all media, no phone, no internet during the first two weeks of my child life, my my new baby's life, in order to connect, disconnect in order to connect. Phil, That's like the science bullshit that we were talking about earlier. Connect to disconnect in order to connect. So if you're looking for me right now, I'm I'm likely disconnected, and I'm I'm spending time with my family, which I very much appreciate. An all serious no, So there's no way I could do any of that stuff without you guys, without all the great folks here at Meat Eater, with all about all the great guests that we've had on this show. That allows us to just run out our favorite little clips. So we're gonna gonna close that out next week next week. Volume four of the Best ofs Right Phil, Volume four, the last one. There are outdoor Legends, the legends of the Outdoors, including Colonel Tom Kelly, guys like Jim pos Wits and more So stick around for that next week, the final installment of your favorite best of THC. Bye, because I can't go a week without doing right. Oh I'm waiting wrong, drinking in heaven. He's a sitting at the box fold stop the throwing fruit, feeling like in all on out barrushhues, all down the wh