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Bear Attack Footage And Seven More Tales of Near-Death Experience in the Outdoors
Bear Attack Footage And Seven More Tales of Near-Death Experience in the Outdoors
Midnight Rescue
Last October, when 85-year-old Greg Tagarook failed to return from a caribou hunt outside Wainwright, Alaska, his 25-year-old grandnephew Benjamin and two friends tracked the elder 20 miles across the frozen tundra. Benjamin tells the story:
I’d been listening to the dispatches of the search-and-rescue crews on my VHF radio all night. By midnight, they still hadn’t found him. So my younger cousin Jerry Ahmaogak and my friend AJ Driggs and I set out ourselves. We’d heard that someone had seen him earlier crossing a lagoon, so we went that way on our snowmachines, looking for his tracks. We found his machine tipped over about 14 miles from town, and we started following his footprints. He was headed straight to Wainwright, navigating by the stars. At first we could see his tracks easily because it was the first snow, but after 2 miles, his prints mixed with thousands of caribou tracks and it got much harder. One of us would stay at the last found footprint and the others would go find the next one. After a while, we could see that he’d started to crawl. Then the wind started blowing snow, and we couldn’t see a thing.
Last October, when 85-year-old Greg Tagarook failed to return from a caribou hunt outside Wainwright, Alaska, his 25-year-old grandnephew Benjamin and two friends tracked the elder 20 miles across the frozen tundra. Benjamin tells the story:
I’d been listening to the dispatches of the search-and-rescue crews on my VHF radio all night. By midnight, they still hadn’t found him. So my younger cousin Jerry Ahmaogak and my friend AJ Driggs and I set out ourselves. We’d heard that someone had seen him earlier crossing a lagoon, so we went that way on our snowmachines, looking for his tracks. We found his machine tipped over about 14 miles from town, and we started following his footprints. He was headed straight to Wainwright, navigating by the stars. At first we could see his tracks easily because it was the first snow, but after 2 miles, his prints mixed with thousands of caribou tracks and it got much harder. One of us would stay at the last found footprint and the others would go find the next one. After a while, we could see that he’d started to crawl. Then the wind started blowing snow, and we couldn’t see a thing.
When we found him at 4:30, he was almost dead, frozen. His entire face was white. We radioed our location to the rescue crew, put our parkas on him, and lay down next to him and on top. It was 10, 20 below. When the crew came after two hours, I got in a sleeping bag with him and they pulled us home. He was in the hospital for a week, but these days he’s back to normal.
—As told to Catherine DiBenedetto
Photo by Field & Stream Online Editors
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Photo Gallery Comments (1)
First off I'll start with pointing out that I come from a family of hunters; I've seen and eaten and enjoyed my fair share of bear, among other game.
Now I'd like to ask what happened to the cub?
Did you allow it run off and die a slow miserable cold terrifying death.
If so... thats not nature thats cruelty.
The men and women in my family who hunt are respectful and compassionate, we hunt to eat not for sport.
No I do not think that anyone should have allowed the sow to maul and kill the sportsmen but like I said "what about the cub?"
If the cub was chased off to die then EVERY one of you who were there should be ashamed of your lack of respect for the animals.
If you hadn't been there then that cub would have had chance at survival, to live as a bear should.
But since you were there the sow did what sows do and you, as a person in fear for their life did what I would have done but would have done differently.
Post a Comment
First off I'll start with pointing out that I come from a family of hunters; I've seen and eaten and enjoyed my fair share of bear, among other game.
Now I'd like to ask what happened to the cub?
Did you allow it run off and die a slow miserable cold terrifying death.
If so... thats not nature thats cruelty.
The men and women in my family who hunt are respectful and compassionate, we hunt to eat not for sport.
No I do not think that anyone should have allowed the sow to maul and kill the sportsmen but like I said "what about the cub?"
If the cub was chased off to die then EVERY one of you who were there should be ashamed of your lack of respect for the animals.
If you hadn't been there then that cub would have had chance at survival, to live as a bear should.
But since you were there the sow did what sows do and you, as a person in fear for their life did what I would have done but would have done differently.
Post a Comment