A man on a hike in southwest Montana survived two consecutive grizzly bear attacks and drove himself nearly 20 miles to a hospital after capturing his gruesome wounds on camera.

Todd Orr, of Bozeman, posted bloody photos and a breathless video recapping the attacks on Saturday, when he was on a hike scouting for elk in Madison Valley.

“Yeah, life sucks in bear country,” Orr said in a video viewed more than 20 million times. “Just had a grizzly with two cubs come at me from about 80 yards. And, uh, I sprayed the s—t out of her with bear spray and then I went on my face and protected the back of my neck.

“She got my head good – I don’t know what’s under my hat – my ear, my arm, uh, pieces of stuff hanging out. I don’t know what’s going on in there. And then my shoulder. She ripped up, I think my arm’s broke, but legs are good, internal organs are good, eyes are good. I just walked out three miles, now I got to go to the hospital, so be safe out there. Bear spray doesn’t always work but it’s better than nothing.”

In shock and maimed but alive, Orr then began heading back down the trail. But within minutes, the bear was back.

“She either followed me back down the trail or cut through the trees and randomly came out on the trail right behind me,” Orr wrote on Facebook. “Whatever the case, she was instantly on me again. I couldn’t believe this was happening a second time! Why me? I was so lucky the first attack, but now I questioned if I would survive the second.”

Orr again made sure to protect the back of his neck while protecting his face and eyes.

“She slammed down on top of me and bit my shoulder and arms again,” the post continued. “One bite on my forearm went through to the bone and I heard a crunch. My hand instantly went numb and wrist and fingers were limp and unusable. The sudden pain made me flinch and gasp for breath. The sound triggered a frenzy of bites to my shoulder and upper back.”

Orr said a gash opened above his ear, nearly scalping him, when the bear bit him another few times in the head.

“The blood gushed over my face and into my eyes,” Orr wrote. “I didn’t move. I thought this was the end. She would eventually hit an artery in my neck and I would bleed out in the trail … But I knew that moving would trigger more bites so a laid motionless hoping it would end.”

Then, the bear suddenly stopped.



“I will never forgot that brief moment,” Orr’s account continued. “Dead silence except for the sound of her heavy breathing and sniffing. I could feel and her breath on the back of my neck, just inches away. I could feel her front claws digging into my lower back below my backpack where she stood. I could smell the terrible pungent odor she emitted. For thirty seconds she stood there crushing me. My chest was smashed into the ground and forehead in the dirt.”

And just like that, she was gone. But Orr would be ready for a third attack. He stayed on the ground and reached under his chest to grab the pistol he was unable to grab earlier. But the pistol – like the beast that nearly killed him – was gone.

The pistol was actually five feet away, Orr wrote, knocked aside during the ferocious attack.

“I picked everything up and moved down the trail again,” he wrote. “I couldn’t believe I had survived two attacks. Double lucky!”

Orr, who was now drenched in blood, started to jog away to “put more distance” between himself and the bear. He stopped to snap a few photos and videos of his injuries, including several nasty gashes on his arms, before making it back to his truck and driving himself 17 miles to the Madison Valley Medical Center in Ennis.

“Moments later I was met at the front door by the doctor, nurse and an officer,” Orr wrote. “I had to ask the officer to open the door, put my truck in park, and unbuckle my seat belt. My left arm was useless. He was impressed I had taken the effort to buckle.”

At the hospital, Orr, 50, endured “eight hours of stitching,” mostly for puncture and tear wounds along his arm and shoulder. He also suffered chipped bone in his forearm and a five-inch gash on his head that will “leave a nasty scar,” he wrote.

“Not my best day, but I’m alive,” Orr wrote. “So thankful I’m here to share with all of you.”

Madison County Sheriff Roger Thompson said Orr should go buy a lottery ticket after surviving both attacks.

“It’s like being struck by lightning twice in the same day; you don’t get attacked by the same bear in one day,” Thompson told the Associated Press. “I think he should go out and buy a lottery ticket now.”

Thompson said Orr did everything he was supposed to do to survive.

“He got a small fracture in his left forearm when the bear jumped on him,” Thompson said. “She just seemed to lose interest because he was playing dead. Then she just wandered off. Bears can be that way when they have their babies with them.”

Authorities at the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks will determine what will happen to the bear, the Montana Standard reports.