Garden Pond | Charging Bear Survivor: ‘It Was All Kind Of A Blur’
With a couple dozen stitches in his right leg, arm and torso, and nine puncture wounds besides, the 36-year-old bear hunter was released from a local hospital to his Wapiti Road home on Tuesday.
Speaking in calm, measured tones, the professional hunting guide related how he was attacked by a charging 365-pound male black bear that he and several friends and their six hounds had chased down near a side road between Garden Pond and the Seboeis River in northern Penobscot County.
“I don’t think I would have done anything different,” Shepard said from his bed at Millinocket Regional Hospital on Tuesday. “At that point, we needed to get in there and kill that bear or he would have killed our dogs.”
Shepard estimated that the bear, which he already had knocked down with his first shot, was moving at up to 15 mph once it turned on him from about 21 feet away. He said he hit the bear with a second shot with his .30-06 Remington pump-action rifle before the roaring beast knocked him down.
“The big deal was making the decision to shoot and making sure of the safety of the dogs and the other people around,” Shepard said. “I believe he grabbed my leg with his mouth and knocked me down or pulled me down, but I went down.”
Shepard said the bear ended up atop him. He was trying to fight it off and defend himself while hollering “Get him off me!” for several seconds as a friend kicked at the bear, and the dogs, all walker and bluetick hunting hounds, attacked the wild animal ” and possibly Shepard, too.
“I think that explains a few of these marks,” he said.
Shepard said he believes the bear knocked the rifle out of his hands, but he isn’t sure.
“It was all kind of a blur at that point,” Shepard said. “It felt like 10 minutes, but I guess it was only a few minutes.”
Dazed by the attack, Shepard wasn’t sure when the bear finally died. He declined to identify the friends who accompanied him. The dead animal later was transported by other members of the hunting party to Shepard’s home. Shepard expects to get 75 to 100 pounds of meat from the carcass.
State records fail to reveal any hunter being killed by a black bear in Maine, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife spokeswoman Deborah Turcotte said. At least 50 people have been killed by black bears in North America since 1960, but most died in nonhunting incidents.
“This is so rare,” Turcotte
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