See for yourself.
Posted on 09/11/2005 4:46:29 PM PDT by Archidamus
•As he's mauled by the bear, the marathoner can think only of his youngster's safety
In the split second before he saw the grizzly's fangs, Johan Otter heard his daughter Jenna's startled voice.
"Oh NO!" Jenna Otter, 18, had been hiking just ahead of her dad as they zigzagged up the steep switchbacks of the Grinnell Glacier Trail at Glacier National Park on Aug. 25. As she turned a blind corner just above the tree line, she stumbled into the path of a sow with two cubs.
The mother bear surged straight for the man. Her teeth sank into his right thigh, and her long claws raked his face, shattering his right eye socket.
In the surreal moments that followed, he tried to keep the bear focused on himself.
"Stay with me," he remembers thinking. "Just don't go to Jenna."
And so the bear, and the 43-year-old hospital administrator from Scripps Memorial Hospital, locked in an ancient battle hardwired into each of their genes: Protect your young at all costs. Even your life.
Otter, a marathoner, threw himself 30 feet down an embankment with the bear in pursuit to try to get further away from his daughter. The bear, estimated at about 400 pounds, landed on top of his back.
She had an "out of this world strength," said Otter. "I was like a rag doll, and I weigh 185 pounds." She flung him back and forth. By then, he could feel his spine had fractured. (Doctors would later find five breaks.)
Frantic, he tried to cover his head with his arms, as hikers are warned to do by park rangers.
"I felt her tooth go into my scalp," he said. Then he felt his scalp rip clean away.
Otter recounted his ordeal last week from Harborview Medical Center where surgeons bolted his battered body back together.
With his head clamped in the bear's jaws, he could hear his skull crack. And just as suddenly, he felt the bear release him.
He lay wedged into a stream, on a small embankment 50 feet below the trail. He couldn't move. What he couldn't see was his daughter curled into a fetal position, on a ledge 20-feet above him, her eyes wide open, facing the bear. The bear clamped down — biting first Jenna's face, then her shoulder.
Jenna didn't flinch, her father recounted later. "That's courage."
The bear, finally spent, left the two alone.
The pair, bleeding and shaken, yelled for help and within half an hour, four hikers discovered them.
Jenna Otter was treated at Kalispell Regional Medical Center in Montana, and released in good condition.
Johan Otter was airlifted to Harborview. Despite arriving with his skull exposed and having lost half his blood, he was conscious.
Doctors stabilized him until Dr. Nicholas Vedder and a team of plastic surgeons could transplant a square-foot of thin sheet muscle from his right side to make a new scalp.
Otter was released from Harborview. Doctors have said they're not sure yet how much of his eye function he'll recover, but he can already wiggle his toes, so they're optimistic about his recovery of movement.
The only thing he won't get back, for sure, is hair.
That doesn't matter to Otter. "I'm so lucky," he said.
Let me guess, to shoot yourself when the bear starts attacking? :-P
Why take condiments? May as well bring along some A-1 steak sauce.
No you shoot the person next to you in the knee and run. A .22 cal derringer is easy to hide from the game warden.
" something that blows enough limbs off the bear (rocket or contact grenade or something) that it physically cannot pursue you."
Now that's a grisly scene....shades of The Holy Grail: "But I cut off your arms!" "No you didn't! No you didn't."
And we don't hunt these things why? Kill them push them back into the far wilderness.
See for yourself.
Heh, I figured that that was the other possible answer.
So I take it, that shoots .45 cal long colt also?
The .454 chambering does. This piece is also available in .480 Ruger.
No guns "allowed", so I NEVER visit "National Park's"!
I have found that there is plenty of uncrowded land to play on where I DO go armed, when no one points the nice places out by making "Parks" out of them they are usually not so overused.
Bears are the least of the problem outside AK, thugs, druggies and rapist are all very fond of the "NO GUNS" NP law!
Remember the three women killed at Yosemite a couple of years ago?
No guns for them, just rape and death.
Boycott any place that does not allow you to go armed, every time you can.
300 mag rifle.
No joke. Check out reply #25. I agree with everything ImpeachandRemove says with the possible exception of the .357 caliber. I own a .357 Mag and I would never trust it on a bear above a can of the pepper spray.
Pepper Spray?
Uh, OK, I guess if you are going to be eaten you may as well be spicy!
Because of environmentalists who think we have no rightto go hiking in national parks that we paid for.
" Should people be allowed to carry weapons in national parks"
So, you gotta go through a metal detector before going hiking in national parks in your neck of the woods or something?
Not really. Any handgun is chancy against a bear, even the very largest caliber handguns.
After seeing what a bear can do to a person, I'll take a .45 (whatever you carry, you have to be able to HIT and SCORE on the bear for it to be worthwhile, and that means a semiauto for me) at a minimum. My preferred weapon for hiking or back country anti-bear armament is a 12ga pump or semi shotgun with magnum slugs.
Absolutely. I will never go to a national park for this reason. I do not go to places where I am disarmed.
The bear always eats the slowest person.
Actually, unless I was hunting the bear, I would carry something like a .44 Mag Carbine. I would never go in an area where I could surprise a bear with a bolt action rifle. You are only going to get one shot. The best thing of all to have with you would be a large dog. While the bear and dog were going at it, you would have more time. Plus the dog would normally smell the bear. That would be your best of all insurance.
If I was bear hunting, I would not use anything less than some type of .34 Mag rifle. I would never go alone and at least one person would always have a automatic rifle such as the .44 Mag I just mentioned.
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