5 Brown Bears Attacked These Deer Hunters

Thank you for watching Scary Bear Attacks. If you like this episode, please remember to hit the like button and leave a comment or two, then subscribe and click on the bell to receive notifications of whenever we release new videos. Also, please remember to share them to your social media. Welcome back to Scary Bear Attacks. Today's episode takes us to southwest Alaska on a small island just nestled into Uganic Bay of Kodiak Island. Though the island is known for giant bears, those bears aren't only on Kodiak, but also on the neighboring islands. One of these is Sally Island, which only rises about 1,000 feet in elevation. It's a diminutive island, only measuring about 2 miles wide by just under 2 miles long. Sally Island is covered in very dense foliage, composed primarily of huge stands of alder interrupted with meadows of grasses. There are no rivers on this small island, which means that brown bears on the island either have to search for fish off the shore or swim to the main island. This is easily done on the south end of the island as Sheep Island comes close to connecting all three islands. Deer are just about the only animals on the island that are not predators, and that is what brings a handful of hunters to shore each fall. The brown bears on the island are directly related to the giant brown bears on Kodiak, so their temperament and power are well known. Now a pack of bears is known as a sleuth or a maul, but bears aren't known to run in packs. There are a few exceptions to this rule, and one of them is when they are siblings or juveniles. Some call a pack of bears a sleuth because of the way bears search through the forest as if they're detectives looking for facts. A pack of sibling bears is called a litter, but as they grow this reference to them loses its applicability due to their age. When the cubs reach around two years of age the sow will frequently run them off so she can more easily fend for herself, but if the cubs contribute to her survival then she will tend to hunt with them. When the litter becomes a sleuth and their mother manages to keep the litter together and raise them into juvenile bears they can remain with her as a dangerous and efficient killing team. When a sow has a litter of cubs the litter is usually between one and three in number. Cubs have a 34% mortality rate in Alaska and frequently spend at least two years with their mother. This means that only two cubs in a litter of three will survive to venture out on their own. The survival of the cubs depends on a few factors including the availability of food sources and the willingness of the sow to defend them. If she can offer a violent defense of her cubs from boars then her cubs will stand a good chance of reaching independence and success. On Thursday, October 30th, 2014, 68-year-old Michael Snowden and his 38-year-old hunting partner Jeff Ostrin arrived at their hunting camp. Each year the men would hunt together for a week on Sally Island and frequently filled their tags, refreshed their friendship, and filled their freezers for the winter. Snowden was a native of Alaska from Sitka and Ostrin moved up from Camas, Washington. The men were hunting with the help of a guide and a party of about 10 deer hunters. They used a boat dubbed the Mary J to deposit the hunters on various locations on the island to hunt for the day. At the end of the hunting day, the hunters would all re-board the boat to return to camp for the night. The first six days of their deer hunting went very well with fun and surrounded by beautiful scenery. On November 4th, 2014, the men's hunt was going just as planned. They'd climbed the steep slopes of the island after coming ashore in the early morning, Pushing their way through brush and glassing breaks in the alders for bucks to emerge made the day slip by in a relaxing manner. At around 10 a.m. Ostrin observed a buck at the top of the island and stalked within shooting range. A single well-placed shot from his hunting rifle brought the buck down and filled one of their tags. As the buck disappeared below the brush, Snowden and Ostrin walked toward the spot where they last saw the buck. Upon arriving at the buck's location, they immediately started to process the deer for recovery by removing its entrails, or gutting it as hunters refer to it. While one man removed the entrails of the deer, the other would stand guard watching for brown bears. Some bears tend to head to a location after hearing the report of a hunting rifle. These bears are called dinner-bill bears, with a shot being the equivalent of calling them in for dinner. The hunters knew that time was key to avoid a confrontation with a hungry bear and after gutting the deer began dragging it toward the island's southeastern shore. The Mary Jay was drifting just off the shore and they would radio for it to pick them up when they were ready. As Ostrin and Snowden dragged their buck through the thick brush, a steady seep of blood and bodily fluids leaked out behind them in a tempting trail. This scent was easily detectable by any bears on the island in the right conditions and would lead to a dangerous situation. With only about a mile left before they reached the shore, the hunters decided to sit down and eat their sandwiches for lunch. They removed their packs and walked about 20 feet farther downhill to sit down. No sooner had they taken the first few bites of their meals than they began to hear some rustling in the brush only a few yards from them. Given their location, the hunters knew this could be a harbinger of something very bad. They grabbed their rifles and chambered rounds in each one. Just as they closed their actions on their hunting rifles, a 700-pound brown bear burst from the brush in their direction. Down in the bay, the Mary Jay was adrift when the hunters on the island came into view in the meadow. The handful of hunters aboard could see Snowden and Ostrin sit down and start eating. To their concern, they also saw five brown bears emerge just above the hunters. The bears appeared to be a sow with her four very large three-year-old cubs. The hunters could see the bears lift their noses to sample the air and then drop their noses to the blood trail of the deer's carcass in the grass. They were interested in whatever was on the breeze wafting from Snowden and Ostrin's direction. The scent of deer blood and guts, likely mixed in with that of the hunters' lunch and the hunters themselves, combined in an alluring aroma to the bears. The hunters aboard the Mary Jay immediately radioed Ostrin and Snowden, but they received no answer. Unbeknownst to the boat, they had turned off their radio while they were packing the deer out and planned to turn it back on to contact the vessel after reaching the shore. The hunters decided to try to signal Snowden and Ostrin by firing their hunting rifles into the air as a warning. It was deer season, and the report of deer hunting rifles wasn't out of the ordinary. Snowden and Ostrin passed off the rifle shots as nearby deer hunters pursuing their quarry. It was then that the hunters aboard the Mary Jay noticed that the sow had finally caught the scent she was searching for on the breeze. Once she figured out where the scent was coming from, she dashed directly toward the source with amazing speed. When the hunters on the Mary Jay witnessed the sow running toward Snowden and Ostrin, they knew they had to do something to help. The boat was pointed ashore, and they began scrambling up the steep slope toward the deer carcass. Back at the deer carcass, as soon as the bushes began to rustle and the men chambered rounds in their hunting rifles, the angry sow had busted from the brush. Snowden fired off a hip shot as a warning to her, but it missed striking the bear. Before he could do much else, the sow had tackled him to the ground, biting and scratching his body wherever she could reach. Between Snowden twisting and kicking, and the sow's jaws snapping and her claws slashing, the sow had ended up with a vice-like grip on his hamstring. He could feel her teeth punch through the outermost layer of tissues, then click together. She violently shook her massive head back and forth, tossing Snowden around along with it. As the sow jerked him back and forth, Snowden lost his grip on his hunting rifle. He desperately tried to flick the leather strap securing his revolver to its holster on his chest, but due to the jostling, was unable to loosen it. She pulled him down the slope a few yards during the furious attack, before the 1.5-pound chunk of the man's flesh tore loose. As Ostrin watched his friend being mauled by the sow, he tried to find a way to shoot her without injuring Snowden. He decided a rump shot would distract the bear, and fired into her rear end, hoping to break her hips and immobilize her. The bear didn't release Snowden, so Ostrin chambered another round, and fired into the bear's ribs. The sow and Snowden began tumbling down the hill for a short distance, after Ostrin's second bullet struck her. During this tumble, they separated from each other a few yards, allowing Ostrin to fire a third shot, killing the sow. By now the bear and both of the men were a few yards down the hill from where the attack had started. Ostrin briefly checked on Snowden before climbing up the hill to retrieve their backpacks and radio. As Ostrin radioed the Mary J., a second bear appeared from the brush, from near where the sow had emerged. Now having had more than enough action for the day, Ostrin pulled his pistol from its holster and dispatched this bear with a single shot. It was slightly smaller in size than the sow, and he realized it was likely her cub. Upon hearing the shots, and now unable to find their mother, the other three juvenile bears fled the area. By now the Mary J. had made land, and the handful of hunters had scrambled a fair portion up the hill toward the men. As they arrived at the attack site, they began to gather the men's backpacks and other gear, as well as render first aid to Snowden's separated hamstring wound. As they examined the injuries, they could see a piece of skin and muscle, about eight by eleven inches, had ripped loose and flopped around, being attached at only one end. Beneath this slab of tissue, they could see an enormous hole in Snowden's hamstring. The Mary J.'s captain used the boat's radio to reach out to the U.S. Coast Guard. They dispatched a Sikorsky HH-60 Jayhawk to Sally Island. As they waited for the helicopter, the hunters tried to keep Snowden awake and from falling into shock. They put pressure on his wound and tried to keep him comfortable as best they could. Once the Coast Guard helicopter arrived on the scene, they deployed a tethered litter to the ground with a rescue expert. They loaded Snowden into the litter, and he was pulled aboard the copter before they headed for Providence Kodiak Island Medical Center. Ostrin was flown back to Kodiak in a small chartered plane. Once he was admitted to the hospital, Snowden's wounds were cleaned and he received 100 staples to reattach his flesh to his hamstring. By Thursday of the same week, he was hobbling around the hospital without a cane. Both men expressed gratitude to medical staff, fellow hunters, and the Mary J.'s crew for their handling of the attack, treatment, and rescue. The Alaska Fish and Game issued a public statement reminding hunters to remove meat from the carcass of their game and place it in sealed containers instead of packing out the entire carcass. Leaving the bones in a fall could provide a distraction for bears converging on the carcass. Snowden says the big takeaway from this experience for him is how quickly the bears picked up on the scent of the blood of the deer. He encourages hunters not to underestimate how sensitive bears' noses can be. Alaska is home to 98 percent of the brown bears in the United States, which puts the attacks reported in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming into perspective. If there were the same density of people in Alaska as there are along the Great Divide, would there be the same frequency of attacks? After reviewing the facts surrounding this episode, I'm left with a few questions for you. Does the fact that this sow successfully raised four cubs and kept them with her as juveniles indicate that she was a good defender of them? Do you think the bears would have been distracted by the carcass had the men removed only the meat from it? Would the hunters have made it safely to the shore if they hadn't stopped to eat, or would the bears have caught them before that? What do you think would have happened had the hunters dropped into a fetal position and just waited for the bears to leave? Tell me what would go through your mind if you were covered in deer blood and guts as you watched five brown bears emerge from the brush only a few yards from you. I will gladly read and respond to your thoughts, so please post them in the comments section below and let's talk about it. Thank you for watching Scary Bear Attacks. 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