AMBUSHED By A Grizzly Bear

the following is my interview with grizzly bear attack Survivor Bob lagasa in 2018 he was hunting elk in Montana with a good friend but while walking through sage bush a mother Grizzly protecting her Cubs ambushed him viewer discretion is [Music] advised well Bob thanks for being here man I really really appreciate your time coming on I know you've had one crazy experience um that I know somehow may think I have an understanding of but I have absolutely no understanding of so tell us a little bit about you uh maybe your background kind of where you're at and sort of uh how this all happened well thanks for having me Dan uh I love uh telling this story and talking more about more than anything about bear safety because I was one of those people who thought ah this will never happened to me oh I see bears and yeah they usually turn and go the other way well uh spot five 5 years ago 2018 October 13th I remember that day uh we were elk hunting and we're archery elk hunting it's early morning uh the evening before we had located some elk uh at the back of some Sage Brush up on the base of the Hillside and what they do these elk will come down that down the mountain travel through the Sage Brush and come out it as some fields that are out in front well we know that there are grizzly bears that like to hang out out in this Sage Brush just because uh there's an abundant food source with these elk uh I don't want to say migrating but just they patterned them they routinely go through there every day well we waited until we could see the following morning uh going back we knew we couldn't get it on the elk that evening so we said let's come back tomorrow morning we have a different game plan coming in from from back on the side well that next morning it is snowing and heavily and there's already probably a couple inches on the ground mind mind you it's October and we wait until we can see and we parked our truck down the road probably about a quarter probably about a half a mile third of a mile somewhere in there we waited till we could see because we have to cross through a small section of Sage Brush and we thought we would get across that go up on the side of the hill and then work our way over to where the elk are um and have some sort of visibility um from a higher from a higher perspective a higher point where we can possibly see the elk we don't want them seeing us but more than anything so that we can see if there's any bearers in that area this area is known for grizzly bears well anyway we get down to uh the area where we can hear hear the elk bugle and we're probably about 200 yard away there's kind of an open swath of probably about 30 40 yards of really low Sage Brush now mind you the Sage Brush is about 7 or 8T tall and when you're walking through it it's kind of like walking through a corn maze you just don't know what's around the other side um anyway so we make our way out to about a 100 yards and there's a kind of a a couple of tall trees there we position there just kind of wait for a minute we hear the elk bugling again it's like okay they're about a 100 yards away let's de over to the to our side and go you know about another 30 40 yards over to that clump of trees and we'll cut the disced so that we can kind of just kind of creep our way through once we uh have some cover well after making about two or three steps from that tree uh going towards the elk a cub reared up and growled and took off the opposite direction oh my gosh and immediately the turn and starts barreling straight towards us it was that fast that fast so she was 15 yards away anywhere from 12 to 15 not very far and immediately as soon as the Cub reared up I mean literally it was probably a second after before mom came at at us my part my heading partner and I both raising our arms yelling bear bear trying to be big you know that's what you're taught you know trying and you know be as big as possible well this bear started charging at us and I'm thinking this could be a bluff charge cuz Grizzlies will do that they'll come at in and they'll stop well after the second bound and more than half the distance had been closed I realized this wasn't a bluff charge and I did not want to reach for my bear spray which I had on my chest or my pistol which I keep on my leg um I just didn't want to be caught with my arms down you know on my side trying to grab it unprotected so I basically just kind of stood there like I was at a barf fight his arms out had my bow in my hand uh hopefully that that would be a little bit of protection and I was just hoping that maybe if she's running to me she would get a whiff of me and just glance on by well that didn't happen yeah uh as she was literally probably 5T away I started kind of backing up and I believe that I I tripped going backwards right when she hit me so it wasn't I don't feel that I had the impact like you know getting crushed by a linebacker just Wham I was able to kind of help with the fall and uh where I was falling backwards as she hit me so I was already in that direction so I'm on my on my on my butt I've got my arm she grabbed my arm when she attacked and basically put her her paws you know kind of around you know start kind of around my my shoulder and just kind of swatting oh my go so her her mouth is on your arm yeah her mouth is on my arm and I'm on my on my butt and I am just blocking with my arm and I'm kicking and trying to get away and finally she lets go I mean she had me for probably 2 seconds but I mean oh my gosh that's a long time when yeah you bet when she tear tearing on me she rars up and I remember looking up at her and I'm thinking that's it and I'm not really feeling anything yet then I'm thinking okay I'm kind of in the clear I mean this isn't a nanc then all of a sudden she just drops down on my right side I look over and her head is literally about two feet away from my head same level I turn my body to protect myself and kind of see what you know what's going to happen here and as I do that in the corner of my eye behind me about probably 10 ft is my hunting partner Greg Gibson and he blasts her with the bear spray and that Billow just hits her she Retreats now I've been hit and she takes off well it Dawns on me the reason that she let go of me in the first place was Greg sprayer the F soon when she was on me oh wow I had no idea about that oh my gosh and then as she takes off I'm trying to get my beer spray off of my out of my pack or off my uh bino harness where I keep it trying to get it off of that so that I can be prepared if she comes back for a second attack I mean I've heard of this before like with Tod or uh and several other uh hikers and Hunters where the bear will come back and get and go for them again well as I'm pulling that out I've got the can in my hand actually I've got a can right here I had it like right here I pulled back I hit the trigger and I mean literally it was a I'm T not even talking a nanc it was basically like this just like and it just went right in my face oh my gosh oh my gosh yeah yeah I had the the nail was in the coffin there I mean I couldn't see before and I'm I'm battling you know to try and see what I can and I'm spitting water in my hands from my from my uh water reservoir throwing it in my eyes and everything's just blurry my face is just stinging and um I don't have a lot of pain besides I can feel I mean I can I feel that I'm that I'm bleeding um I could see it like a little bit on my glove when I'm wiping my face um my eyes are just I mean everything is a blur and I ask Greg like how effed up am I I mean did she get me and he's you know looking at me he was like yeah you got some scratches but you look good and I'm just cuz I can't I can't tell um so now we're standing there for probably a good 15 minutes you know yelling trying to get our vision back cuz Greg lost his vision too um I mean it not like you're completely blind but it is painful to to to look to look around I mean I was literally having to kind of hold my eyes open just because of the I guess you know the nerves in my eyes would want to close and uh protect them anyway so during that 10 minutes uh Greg's like put your face in the in the snow there's a uh Sage brush brush that has like probably four or five inches of snow on it so I put my face in the snow and it's just it feels good cuz it's cool and all of a sudden I just realized like I can't see and I can't really hear anything if anything's going to happen it's like right now man you got to fight for this oh my gosh at that point man I just had my head on alert fighting for everything I could to keep my eyes open and as I'm spitting water and throwing it in my hand in my eye my left arm or my left hand it starts getting a little bit harder and harder and I'm hearing kind of a clicking when I when I cup and I'm like feeling my arm like I I think it broke my arm but or you know I think she broke my arm but I I don't feel like it's been you know discombobulated or disconfigured um but as that 15 minutes went on to the half an hour by the time that we got back out to the road um my arm or my hand was kind of locking up where I really couldn't do much with it and we ended up deciding to go back up on the hillside the way that we came in rather rather than going through the Sage Brush another couple hundred yards and getting out in the open fields and then making our way to the road so we decided now let's go back up on the hillside where we can see and just a direct route back that way rather than go to the Sage Brush so when we got about halfway back to where the truck was we've gone probably you know an eigh or A4 mile um there was another open section of Sage Brush probably about 60 yards that kind of ran for several hundred yards to uh the county road and we decided that we would go through that we thought we had enough visibility on both sides that we could you know protect ourself if the bear came out from the Sage Brush and it was uh you know a a seemed like a long walk it took us a while we're having to stop like every you know every couple of minutes to try and you know put Snow on our face water it our eyes and it it was just uh painful as far as that goes uh we made it back to the C Road and I waited there Greg ran down the rest of I don't know quarter mile or so and was able to get the truck came back and picked me up so you're sitting on the side of the road by yourself yeah actually there was a small house that was right there and uh I went up there both Greg and I did and uh um they got me a glass of water that was kind of that was kind of weird yeah it's like you know are are you okay you want a glass of water I'm like okay so anyway I'm I'm bleeding and I that's when I took a selfie kind of one of those first selfies that you can see I want to see how effed up I was yeah and uh at that point you know it's like okay you know it's not too bad I could see that I had some um claw marks right here and right here on this eye and then a few on on my face um um I didn't feel beat up my arm was not hurting yet but the hand I knew that something was was wrong so Greg picks me up uh we're staying in a we ran out a cabin uh probably about a mile down the road 3/4 of a mile down the road we go back to the cabin I take off my uh my rain coat um because it had been snoow it just waterproof uh camo gear and when I took that off I could see all the blood on my arm that was on the fleece that I was wearing underneath it I didn't realize that I was bleeding that much so I took my uh took that that fleece off and then at that point I could see um the teeth mark that were right here and the big bottom tooth Mark that was right down here on the bottom and that's where she opened me up and it was just a big flap of skin that was uh folded back um luckily there wasn't a lot of muscle damage at that point yeah I could feel it when I was squeezing and I could actually at that point once my shirt was off I could see my arm had some disconfigured so from there thank goodness my hunting partner Greg Gibson is a professional ski patrol been on the ski patrol at has a professional for over 40 years so he has a good bag of goodies for first aid and we got we got back there uh he splinted me up wrapped it up um cleaned it a little bit just around it and then we made the The Bee Line to go to Livingston Montana which is about an hour away now mind view it is snowing pretty heavy and it's pretty much the first snow of the winter um and as we're getting on the the highway that goes from uh Gardener to Livingston we run into the hunting guide that we work for and we tell him what happened and he's like are you guys okay and Gregs Y and he goes all right I'll I'll kind of get things going well he had phoned the state police the sheriff's department the fishing game and when I in the hospital and when we uh so anyway we're driving into the high we're driving down the highway and like I said it's snowing first snow of the year we're about halfway there and literally 20 30 seconds in front of us this car spins out flips over on its on its top and is sliding down the road off the side of the road and luckily there were about four or five cars in front of us so everybody slowed down and we're driving by the like do we help and Greg's no man we got to get going and and luckily we could see that they were okay as we were driving by slow but all these other cars helped them yeah so that was just a wild day and then uh what when when we get to the hospital so you you were thinking about getting out and helping these other people that flipped over on their roof of their car when your arm is uh in the condition that it was yeah I you're you are a better man than me I will just say that right now so I mean after after I could kind of see and we're back of the cabin and I've got this thing splinted up I'm like okay let's go to the doctor and you know I'll get it set and I'll be in a cast or whatever you know my kids have broke their arms on the swing set or whatever and boom in and out you know a couple hours that's kind of what I'm thinking I'm not in a lot of pain I mean besides just stingy and my face is a all swelled up and um but it's like you know you know when somebody when something like that happens I mean you know you're there to to help luckily we can see that they were good and other people were helping so we drove to the hospital what we pulled into the hospital uh we we walk into the doors and soon as like the the doors open up the automatic doors we walk in there's the reception of the ER room and immediately the guy behind the the reception says over the PA your bare victim is here and like in two seconds later the double doors to the ER room open up a wheelchair comes out with a doctor pushing it and two nurses on his side and it was like the Gates of Heaven just opened up and it was like they were there on me within I mean seconds it was amazing so anyway we uh went into the ER room and uh kind of started cleaning out asking you know questions and then fishing game shows up takes about 5 minutes to kind of go through the question probably 10 15 minutes going through all the questions of you know where was this provoked da da what happened um do you think the bear should be you know brought down was she aggressive and you know no we didn't think she was aggressive this is what bears do protecting protecting their their young and then doctors working on me they do an x-ray and realize that hey yes it's broken and at that point he said that the bone uh the teeth had gone into the bone and actually go made indentations in the bone so he said you're going to have to go to m uh not moula but Boseman and have a surgeon work on you and we're not going to be able to stitch you up for a little bit you're going to need to have surgery it's going to need to be um cleaned out or flushed out well also during that time he's like okay your eye he stitches it up and literally I was like maybe 2 mm away from losing one of my eyes uh the tear duct on it is uh uh acts up quite a bit like in the winter if I'm driving and I've got the heat on that I get kind of like a I don't want to say a headache but my eye gets really dry and it hurts so I got to have the air hitting it and then the sheriff came in asked the same questions state police come in asked the same questions and and uh within an hour and a half I'm in an ambulance going to Boseman get to the hospital same thing soon as we pull into the emergency uh stall that they back those uh uh ambulances in they were on me like within seconds and Wheeling me out to do more X-rays and get the flush going um I ended up staying in the hospital for 5 days just so that they could flush out all the bacteria because if they would have sewn up uh the the the uh the cuts the the bite marks uh the bacteria might have become trapped in there so they had to make sure that that flushed out yeah it was a definitely a wild experience and I'm extremely lucky that it came out the way that it did and I'm going to tell you I think the reason that it came out the way that it did was both Greg and I are pretty proficient with using Bears spray uh we've done numerous videos on how to properly use bear spray as hunting guides uh we would do that and show that to the clients so that it would give them uh a good uh understanding of the use of it um and thank goodness Greg was right there did not lose his cool and was able to uh basically um stop the attack you know from pretty much the start so yeah thankful for that and uh I so you were you were uh proficient in bear spray prior to go to this yeah yeah one thing the first thing I'm going to tell you that I learned from this soon as you see a bear I don't care whether it's 100 yards away get your bear spray out get it out immediately and then you can be big you know that was that's one of the things that they tell you to do you know if you get uh be big kind of walk back slowly um immediately get your bear spray out so that you are prepared and like I said you can be big afterwards it only take it you know 2 seconds to do it but when a bear is charging you know from 15 to 30 yards we're talking two to 3 seconds tops which yeah I mean a lot can happen in that time and so best be prepared on that wow how close were you and your buddy together when that uh Grizzly attacked you oh probably probably less than 10 ft yeah probably 8 10t apart that was why do you think it why did it go after you were you the one that startled the Cub I was in front I was yeah I you know he was Greg was right behind me um I I'm guessing he was about 10 ft behind me I mean he might have been slightly more but I'm guessing it was he was pretty close um just because we were trying to stay as tight together so we're not giving the elk more opportunity to see two different people at two different times so you he was with me did he have his bear spray out like you had recommended was he were you were was he was he walking through the Sage Brush with the with an out at all no no he had it on his hip and as soon as the attack happened um he was able to to pull it out when I was on the ground and spray her at that point and uh then when she reared up and drop back down again he was able to you know pretty much get her Point Blank at you know a couple feet away just a boom a big a big big dusting of it how big do you think this bear was uh she wasn't huge but I mean as far as grizzly bears you know bores can be you know 800 to 900 lb oh my gosh she but she was probably I'm guessing 400 to 500 lb oh my gosh pretty good size but and the Cub the Cub was almost as big as mom probably 300 lb Cub was 2 years old as what is what I think because of the size and that would have been probably the last year that the Cub would have been with Mom wow I I I read a statistic uh recently from the National Park Service I thought this was interesting it says that the chances of being injured by a bear are approximately one in 2.1 million according to them and it says you're more likely to get killed by a bee than a bear and way more likely to get killed by another human than either a bear or a bee and I thought that was an interesting statistic do you feel like uh you're uh you know like I mean one in 2.1 million I should have bought a lottery ticket yeah right exactly yeah I feel I feel like I got a lottery ticket because uh I'm I'm here today and uh virtually unscathed you know so I I feel pretty pretty lucky about this whole thing yeah it was a it was a learning experience uh on several several levels of you know what to do in the case of an attack and how to be a little bit more prepared um yeah a couple things that uh that I really stress do not put your bear spray on your backpack keep it on your body on yourself uh you know you take your backpack off to relieve yourself or to just to rest and your backpack sitting 10 feet away and all of a sudden the bear is on you you can't get to your bear spray keep it on your person at all times I keep mine on my vinyl harness which is mounted on my chest right there and it stays with me from morning till I get back to Camp it never ever comes off even if I'm breaking down an animal it stays right there it stays nice and tight and compact keep it on your person um you know that's that's kind of the number one number one thing and be proficient with it know how to take it out of take it out of the holster how to slide it out of the holster how to pop the top off and how to you know to be a efficient and I show that in the the different Bears spray videos that that we do um you know it you just need to be comfortable with it so how has uh how has this changed you are are you what was it like to go back out on your on your you've obviously hunted again so you you you you've made the decision was this just like oh man I'm fine let's go or was what was that like for you you know if I would have been severely mauled it might be a different story on my Approach but I've been you know five years of spending you know weeks on end out there hunting uh and I've come across grizzly bears luckily nothing close that following year I saw 13 grizzly bears um yeah and the Year this two years after that uh in another area had two Cubs Go blowing out of the the bushes out in front of us as we were walking to a to one of the uh hillsides there was an open open area and right when we were about ready to the edge of it the two Cubs Go sprit out of there and immediately bear spray out and we're yelling bear bear bear luckily there was no sour around so yeah um things can happen and uh um I try to be as prepared as possible and I don't walk through tall Sage I don't walk through thickly uh thick forested areas real Brushy I'll walk around it I typically try not to walk down through creep beds or cool areas um that uh I that are really tight um yeah it's uh it I just try to be as prepared as possible was there would there be an opportunity where you'd grab your pistol instead of a bear spray yeah if I was out of bear spray and if uh yeah and if there was you know just if she kept coming back and I was hitting bear spray and it and it wasn't really working it was detering yeah then you know it's for me it's it's Sur survival um yeah um it's not the first first thing that uh that I would do um grabbing the pistol be the Bears spray but pistol would be you know backup and that's pretty much why I have it do you ever you ever talked to other guys that you know have had this experience I know you mentioned tdor I've had I've had a lot of people reach out to me especially after it um one of them he you know said welcome to the club uh and uh there kind of Club is that yeah um I have met a couple people um one person was God this was you know he was attacked in the 80s and uh luckily nothing too bad uh got his calf um I think he was like had had got in a tree um but that's that's it yeah there's not not a tremendous amount of people that you read into that have been attacked by uh by a bear um so yeah it's uh like you said that one in 2.1 million or something like that yeah so would would um should PE know obviously people that are watching this are thinking you know grizzly bears or maybe I'm from Wisconsin and I'm from the Milwaukee uh just I'm right between Milwaukee and Chicago there's no bear where I live and so people when they hear bear they just think you know bear so black bear brown bear grizzly bear that kind of thing should people be afraid no you shouldn't be afraid but you should be prepared and you should be um aware of your surroundings uh always be looking ahead and you know expect to to see a bear but don't be afraid I mean you know granted if you if you're a hunter and you're going into you know retrieve your animal make a lot of noise um I mean if if you're tracking an animal yeah you have to be quiet but be you know be ready to to yard out that uh that bear spray and protect yourself if that if the bear is on the carcass I've had that happen where we come across uh a Grizzly that was on one of uh one of the elk Hills uh that was a couple years ago and uh uh L we didn't see the grizzly but uh the grizzly had actually dragged the gal's elk down the hill about 30 yards and it fell into some Deadfall so my friend Greg he and his Hunter Erica the elk uh passed and fell up against uh some logs so Greg came back to Camp said hey let's go get some Manpower cuz we're never going to get the elk out here and he pinned it said I will come in for the Bottom Road with we could walk up the drainage and get it out that way well it had snowed that day and uh as we were driving in that night there were six of us two shotguns and uh you know everybody had pack boards and we're you know ready to to get this elk out of there soon as we parked the truck at directly underneath the line of where the pin was Grizzly prints like oh great we start following the grizzly print or we start you know following our track to get up there from the pin and that's where the Grizzlies going and uh so we made as much noise as possible six guys try not to startle surprise let that bear know and luckily we got there that bear had drug the the El downhill a little bit into log pile and actually got like its claw and kind of gutted it luckily it didn't get into any of the meat but there was some guts hanging out and it you know another half an hour would have been a whole different story wow jeez so looking back on everything that's happened to you and what you've experienced since then um would you have changed anything that happened would could if you could go back in time and pull this out of your life to have never had it happen would you do that no I mean yeah yeah I I guess I would I mean I I don't want to be attacked by a bear but I came out of it fine but my take away from it is you know what I would have done differently is I would have immediately grabbed my bear spray as soon as I saw that Cub rear up I would have been pulling that out first so that's that's the only thing I would have done different wow you know hunting you know I I I I you know you've got some of your viewers that are hunters and some that aren't but you know Hunters um you know when we're hunting we're being quiet when we're going in um on the hunt you know hiking you can make noise you know you don't want to be making a ton of noise where you're just you know being annoying but you want to make sure that you give you know a bear Mount lion a little bit of warning that hey I'm coming down the trail you know and um so it's not a total surprise where you do get attacked yeah well man you this is I I don't think I've ever not talked this much during a podcast so this your story is is just Next Level that's that's amazing I for one I'm glad you're okay and uh I'm I'm glad that you at least have the knowledge now to better help other people in the situation I mean I can tell you from from I'm a Backpacker and I've been doing that for 10 years and I've been all over the country backpacking and uh most people I would say unless you're in like Grizzly country don't carry Bears spray uh and a lot of people still don't carry in Grizzly country especially when they're hiking like down to CDT through like Wyoming and that kind of thing because there's so many other hikers there that they just don't really see a value in it or they don't think that there's anything that's going to happen to them because there's so many other people out on trail or maybe they think that the you know the the Grizzlies are um staying away from the trail because that's where they know where the people are and stuff but um I think you are a testament to preparation proficiency and uh that people probably should be buying their bear spray uh for sure even though it cost you 50 bucks when when you had out it's good for I think typically 3 or four years um cheap piece of insurance um and you know like you're saying you're on these hiking trails people leave food Bears have got good noses Mount lions you have some sort of protection when you're there um I mean there's California they have that cgar attack here um you know if they if they would have had Bears spray they might have been able to protect themselves um it's it's cheap insurance um I I highly recommend if you're doing anything outdoors whether you're mountain biking hiking fishing hunting whatever it might be trying and keep some bear spray keep it on you I I see mountain bikers all the time riding with bear spray on their bike more than likely when a bear is chasing you you're probably going to be riding as fast as you can and a good chance of crashing and if you crash you're going to get separated from your bike keep it on yourself yes yeah most most important thing yeah yeah well uh Bob I appreciate it man appreciate your time uh anything else you wanted to share all about this whole situation I just um you know really I really stress you know being prepared and knowing how to use spare spray so awesome all right you're the man you're a better man than me I appreciate you Brave guy getting back out there yeah yeah I think God was on your side that's what I think yes definitely was

Channel: Dan Becker

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Id: A7uD71mYx3c

Length: 36min 51sec (2211 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 10 2024