I've been asked by a couple people here at HBC about the pics in my gallery on the one titled grizzly attack. Well it happened to a buddy of mine in the Halfway River on a horse pack trip in 2005. There was four of them that split into two groups one group went after sheep and one wanted an elk. So in the evening the the one group (a father and son) ended up getting an elk and could not get it out due to failing light. Therefore, they gutted the elk and dragged it to a bit of an opening away from the gut pile just in case of bears. The next day they took the horses and packboxes in in the morning and made as much noise as possible upon approaching the elk. No bear sign was noted when they approached so they put their loaded guns on a tree within reach and started to debone the meat and put it into the packboxes. Im not sure how long they were there but as they were loading up the boxes the son said he heard a noise and looked up and all he had time to do was that (look up) and a sow hit him with her chest and knocked him down, while two 2-3 year old cubs hit the father and did the same thing to him.
In the commotion the sow grabbed the son in her jaws and began shaking him and ripped his pants off and took some muscle mass out of his leg. Somehow the son broke free and managed to grab his gun and shot the sow and she ran off with the cubs. I guess the father was so distraught that he just froze and could not do anything during attack. Tough thing to go through. After they made sure that the grizzlies were not coming back they jumped on the horses and made their way back to camp and had to cross the Halfway again. The banks were pretty steep entering the river and the son did not have use of one of his legs and went head over tea kettle over the horse and fell into the river and then the horse stepped on him and I think it broke a rib (i believe). They finally got back on the horses and made it back to camp where they met up with the other group and one of the guys had his cell phone and GPS and climbed up on of the nearby mountains and luckily got cel service from the Pink Mountain tower and called in the coordinates for a medivac.
At the end of the day everyone made it out alright and the son lost a portion of his thigh muscle but he is in good shape today. As it turns out he did get a sheep but got nothing from the elk. They left everything there including pack boxes, pants, rack, everything. The CO's came back the next day in a chopped and found a big boar laying on the elk that was burried under sod,dirt, grass and would not leave. They also found the sow about 200-300 yards away dead and the cubs were with her. The CO's ended up shooting the cubs.
We went back there the following hunting season and found the pack boxes, rack, pants. It was amazing how deep those pack boxes were burried under all the sod. Probably 50-75cm was the deepest.
The rack and packboxes in the background.
The view that the grizzly had when it charged. The guys were standing approximately where the two pack boxes are in the top of the picture. The sons gun was leaning against the two trees on the right hand side of the pic.
Scarry sh*t......
The year before in the same area a sow with two cubs ran through they pack string of horses and created a very scarry moment as Jimmy fell off his horse and it took off with his gun. Luckily the bears took off also.....Jimmy figured it was the same bears.
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