Here is a story that ran in yesterdays Anchorage Daily News (
www.adn.com). Note the speed of the attack. Sorry to paste the whole thing in, but this paper quickly archives stories and a link would only be good for a day or so.
Oops - I have to chop sections to reduce story to 1000 characters before I can post it.... Sorry.
Grizzly attack
Hunting partners' bonds tighten as North Pole man struggles to save his badly mauled friend
By Jan Thacker
Daily News Correspondent
(Published: September 23, 2001)
North Pole Time has begun to heal the patchwork quilt of stitches that laced Johnny McCoy's scalp and arms back together, but hunting buddy Gary Corle can still hear the agony of McCoy's screams and the crunch of his bones breaking in the jaws of a grizzly bear several weeks ago.
Doctors needed more than 1,000 stitches to sew up McCoy.
The bear that tried to tear off his head peeled away one of his ears and much of his scalp. It broke both of his arms. It ripped loose an eye.
The 57-year-old Corle, who was run over by the bear before it attacked McCoy, has his own frightening memories. Since the Sept. 4 attack, he's found it difficult to sleep.
"When you stand there face to face with a bear like that, your whole life goes before you and you think you're probably going to end right there," he said. "You're going to go to heaven and be with Jesus."
I THOUGHT SHE WAS GOING TO KILL HIM'
After landing on a Delta River tributary, they began scouting for moose and marking trails to their camp.
"We'd walked the river a mile or so up and then went into the woods, looking for landmarks to remember," said Corle, who remembers first hunting this area of willows and beaver ponds in 1973.
It was early in the morning, and the day showed promise of being another gray one. The men saw bear scat, but paid it no more attention than normal. Corle suggested the berry crop had been good, noting some of the droppings looked like "blueberry pancakes."
The men hiked together until McCoy had to make a rest stop. Corle said he'd keep going slowly, flagging the trail as he went. Minutes later, McCoy was back on that trail, hurrying to catch his hunting buddy.
Just as he caught sight of Corle, he said, he saw a sow grizzly charging from his friend's left with two small cubs in tow. McCoy threw up his gun to shoot, but almost instantly Corle and the sow were one.
"I saw that bear and didn't even have time to alert Gary," McCoy said. "I thought she was going to kill him. I took my gun but couldn't fire without hitting Gary."
Corle was taken completely by surprise.
"I heard something behind me and the first thing that came to my mind was that it was Johnny," he said. "I turned my head toward the sound and looked and it was the darnedest thing I ever saw, a big ole grizzly bear and that sucker was coming full bore toward me."
The grizzly bowled into Corle, knocking him face first into a thick clump of brush. He landed belly down. The backpack he was wearing tangled in the vegetation, which was probably a good thing because the bear jumped on top of his back and began to pummel him.
"I couldn't get off my belly to get turned around," he said. "My whole life came before me. I just pictured her leaving me in pieces and me dying."
At some point, Corle remembers, he managed to get turned around far enough to jam his rifle into thick brown fur. He pulled the trigger. He doesn't know if a bullet hit the bear. He does know that she suddenly let go.
"It was just like a wind blew her away," Corle said. "Boom -- and she was gone. I figured she was laying there dead.
"But she wasn't and a few seconds later I heard the most agonizing scream I ever heard. I never heard a man holler like that. Johnny was literally being torn to pieces. They were 10 yards away and the bear was slashing him. I could hear her tearing his flesh."
Corle wanted to shoot the bear off his buddy, but everything was a blurred frenzy. Corle feared hitting McCoy with a bullet from the .30-06.
And then the attack was over.
The men don't think it could have lasted longer than seconds, though McCoy remembers every tick as an eternity.
"She was a demon from hell," he said. "Just like a mad dog. The power of her mouth and teeth were amazing. I'll never forget that. It was like everything was teeth."
The bear bit through his arms and shoulder. He could feel the bones crushing.
Her teeth around one arm, the bear shook him viciously. She chewed his hand. She bit his head.
As McCoy tried to fend her off with his .300-caliber Winchester Magnum rifle, he ground her teeth into the metal of the barrel.
"I could feel her trying to grab hold of my whole head," McCoy said. "I kept thinking, this isn't happening to me. This isn't happening to me.' "
By the end, he was simply playing dead, hoping the attack would end before he died, believing that "if I moved one foot she'd finish me off."
Then it was over. McCoy was left lying on his back. The bear glanced at him. He looked back. Then the bear tossed a quick glance at Corle and fled. There was no time to shoot.
Corle thought about going after the bear, but looked at his friend and was horrified by what he saw.
"He was in bad shape," Corle said. "His ear was under his chin and his eyeball was out of his head. He was bleeding everywhere. Everything was covered in blood. He was laying there in agonizing pain."
Corle knew he didn't have time to waste worrying about it. McCoy needed immediate first aid. Corle took off McCoy's backpack and started reassuring his hunting partner.
"I told him he'd be OK," Corle said, "that I was there and I would take care of him."
After he checked both rifles to make sure they were ready in case the bear came back, he pulled bundles of game bags -- ideal for bandaging -- from the backpacks.
"That ear bothered me more than anything," Corle said, "and his scalp was laid open to his skull. Blood was dripping off his hand and arm."
Corle immediately went to work. First he pushed McCoy's ear and scalp back in place. Then he wound game bags under McCoy's chin and over his head. He replaced the eyeball as best he could before wrapping a bandage over it and around the top of McCoy's head.
"I tied it tight to stop the bleeding," he said.
Because of excruciating pain, McCoy wouldn't let Corle check his bleeding arms, both of which had multiple compound fractures and punctures wounds clear through.
'GARY CORLE SAVED MY LIFE'
What took a grizzly bear just a moment to rip apart, doctors spent six hours putting back together. Dr. William Wennen, a renowned plastic surgeon, happened to be at the hospital when McCoy arrived and took over repairing the head wounds. Dr. Jim Tamai pinned and repaired the fractured arms and worked on the badly damaged hand.
Today, Johnny McCoy's once-smooth face could be better described as a patchwork crazy quilt.
His head has been shaved bare and tidy stitches march in straight and not-so-straight lines all over the top of his head, down his scalp and across his forehead. There are also short lines on his cheeks.
His left eye has been properly refitted into its socket and the lid carefully stitched back together. His left ear, which had been left dangling around his chin, has been sewn back into place and doctors are confident it will work.
Both the eye and ear are swollen and blackish-red with bruises that look terribly painful.
All in all, there are some 35 inches of stitching piecing McCoy back together. Arms and hands are swathed in casts and bandages. To keep down the swelling, both are held upright by slings attached to poles.
Healing will take time, but the prognosis is good. Doctors say his face should heal quickly with no lasting damage except for some scarring. His injured arms and hand will take many weeks to heal and, because of the severe damage, he may suffer from a weakened grip.
Corle escaped the incident relatively unscathed physically. He was bruised and bitten on the arm, but didn't even notice the latter until he was taking a shower. Later scrutiny of his clawed and chewed backpack, however, brought home the reality that he, too, could have been critically injured.
One of McCoy's first whispered requests after coming out of surgery was to see his hunting partner. In his first interview with a reporter, the still-medicated McCoy seemed fixated on one fact:
"Gary Corle saved my life," he said. "Gary Corle saved my life."
PLANNING TO GO BACK
Corle talks about his love of the land and how he treasures and values his time afield in Alaska. This is much more than a place to live. Hunting is much more than a jaunt into the outdoors.
"I feel so close to God out there," he said "That is my prayer room. I don't ever want to lose it or give it up."
Corle said the attack hasn't left him any more afraid of bears than he was a month ago. He's planning to go back. The two hunting buddies -- one slightly battered and the other stitched and pinned back together -- are discussing next year's moose hunt