Dylan McWilliams is either the unluckiest guy in the world — or the luckiest.

“I don’t know, I think I’m just lucky in unlucky situations,” the 20-year-old Colorado resident says.

McWilliams is currently in Hawaii, for what was supposed to be a two-week long vacation full of beach time and surfing. On Thursday, he said paddled out into the waters off the south shore of Kauai, then something hit his leg.

“I was looking around and saw a lot of blood and I saw a shark underneath me,” he said. “I started kicking at it… and swam as fast as I can to shore.”

He was several dozen yards out from the beach and by himself. Other surfers were in the water a distance away.

“The scariest part was just swimming back,” he said.

When he finally made it back to shore, McWilliams said a woman on the beach helped him contact emergency officials for medical help, and notify other people in the water. Dylan ended up with seven stitches to close up the wounds in his leg.

This wasn’t his first brush with Mother Nature’s dangerous side.

Last summer, Dylan worked an instructor teaching survival skills at a camp in Boulder County. While sleeping one night, a bear showed up at his campsite.

“And then it pulled me into its mouth and then it grabbed me with its teeth right back here,” he said at the time. “When it pulled, it tore the skin and scraped along my skull which was like the cracking noise that I heard.”

“A lot of people don’t believe it, they’re like — that’s crazy,” McWiliams said Sunday. “How does that happen to one person? Like, that rarely, rarely happens to anyone, and — the same person twice.”

And, there’s more. A few years ago, he was bitten by a rattlesnake while hiking in Utah.

Despite the close calls, he said he is not afraid of wildlife. Rather, he loves it. McWilliams considers the late Steve Irwin one of his idols.

“Ever since I can remember, that’s all I wanted to be,” he said, referring to Irwin’s work with animals. “I’m out with the animals all the time. To me, it’s like, I was in the wrong spot at the wrong time.”

This story originally appeared on NBC affiliate KUSA’s website

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