The grizzly that tried to eat me alive: One man's petrifying story of an attack by an Alaskan bear

When I first saw the bear, it was standing so still that a worm of unease crawled into my stomach. During the 40 years I have lived and worked in Alaska, every one of the hundreds of grizzly and brown bears I have seen was either feeding, walking, running, fighting, or mating. I had never seen one do absolutely nothing.

That is, until one rainy day in the spring of 2007 when I looked up into the southwest wind and saw a bear standing at the edge of the forest, 75 yards away.



The stillness of this bear radiated tension the way a deranged, glaring stranger gives off a dark energy you cross the street to avoid. I had lost two friends to grizzlies, and knew that although predatory attacks are rare, when they do happen there is only one outcome.

Savage: Bears rarely attack humans, but Lynn Schooler says the stillness of his attacker radiated tension. He had already lost two friends to bears and knew that when they do attack there was usually only one outcome.

Two weeks earlier, I had left my home in the small town of Juneau to travel alone in the Alaskan wilderness, hoping to find some relief from a marriage that seemed in danger of crumbling after just one year.

My solitary trip had already convinced me that I missed my wife and wanted our marriage to work. Yet, suddenly, I was confronting a grizzly bear whose uncharacteristic behaviour set off alarm bells, and made me realise I was in mortal danger.



Just then, the grizzly came to life as if a switch had been thrown. Its head jerked upright, and it started walking quickly toward me. It was clearly injured and probably starving. It lacked a grizzly's normally bulging muscles, dreadlocks of matted hair hung from abnormally lean forelegs.

I fumbled in my backpack for the bear spray. This contains a concentration of oleoresin capsicum, the oily inflammatory ingredient found in chilli peppers that creates a burning sensation in the eyes, nose and lungs.



It is effective only at distances under 30 ft - which meant letting the bear come worryingly close. But in the next instant a gust of wind hit my face, and I knew that if I fired it would be my eyes burned by the caustic spray.



'A bear may take its time as it tears random mouthfuls from back, buttocks, legs and shoulders, or goes in through the stomach for the organs. It does not care if you scream or for how long'

Without thinking, I snatched off my widebrimmed hat and held it over my head, yelling 'Stop!' in the loudest voice I could muster. In grizzly society, size matters, and stretching myself upright, waving my hat, was the only way I had to look bigger.



The bear slowed to a walk but it kept coming. Then it stopped, its head dropped, and it sniffed at the ground. When it looked up again, there was something primitive and terrible in the way it stretched out its neck to peer at me. I felt like a rodent being considered by a snake.



The bear broke into a loose-footed lope, closing the distance between us. Its eyes were like flat black coins, with no whites or 'catchlight',as wildlife photographers call the glint of reflected light that brings an eye to life. I knew that if I turned to run or backed away, the predator would strike.

It was now just a few yards away. I could see the red glint of a deep cut over one eye, and when the bear lowered its nose to the ground and sniffed, blowing like a horse, I could see its lips puff out with every snort.

I started trying to edge upwind, but he circled, moving to cut off my retreat. Prolonged circling, closing in like a shark and refusing to be driven off, as this bear was doing, is textbook predatory behavior. This bear meant to eat me. And I was under no illusions as to how it would happen.



Most predators kill fairly quickly - but not so with bears. Big cats, like the leopard, go directly for the head, killing with a single bite that penetrates the brain. Crocodiles seize their prey and drag it into deep water, spinning over and over to kill by trauma and drowning.

Attacker: Mr Schooler says he tried to replicate a bigger bear to defend himself by using an improvised tarpaulin and a ski pole

But when a bear strikes, it simply rushes in like a locomotive and knocks its prey to the ground. once the prey is down, the bear pins it with its paws and starts feeding. It doesn't need to kill you first.

A bear may take its time as it tears random mouthfuls from back, buttocks, legs and shoulders, or goes in through the stomach for the organs. It does not care if you scream or for how long.It may even feed for a while, then come back later for more.



The harsh winter had hit wildlife hard, and the bears were coming out of hibernation desperate for food. They came down to Alaska's fertile coastline to forage for vegetation until the melting snows allowed them further inland.



But the new grasses on the beaches weren't as rich a source of protein as my flesh. I threw a rock at the bear and missed. I threw another and the stone glanced off its back.



But then another throw struck the protruding knob of its hip bone and the bear bolted, running for the woods so fast that its legs blurred. grabbing my hiking poles and holstering the bear spray I hurried away, moving as fast as I could.



I probably covered less than a mile over the next half hour, kicking myself all the time for having declined a friend's .44 Magnum, saying it was unnecessary and the extra weight would be too much for the trek.

I came out of the woods onto the beach, and just as I began to relax a fraction, I glanced back. And there it was again. The bear was perhaps 200 yards away, nose to the ground, snuffling toward me like a bloodhound.



I could not possibly run far enough or fast enough. I could climb a tree, but not with my pack; and if I left it on the ground, the bear would destroy it and I would be stuck in the wild with no tent, sleeping bag, food or equipment.

It took my fear-addled brain a moment to remember I had brought with me the flare gun - a plastic pistol designed to fire the kind of aerial flares sailors use to alert the Coast guard. The bear was just a stone's throw away as I fumbled a shell into the flare gun and pulled the trigger. There was a snap, a pause, and the flare ignited.

It missed. Instead of arcing in to hit at the bear's feet, it hissed straight and level, passing a yard above the bear's neck. The bear did not jerk or flinch. It just kept coming.

I loaded the other flare. It skipped off a patch of gravel a few feet in front of the bear and burst into bright phosphorescence. The bear turned and loped away into the trees, looking over its shoulder.



But a lope is not a run, and I knew it would be back. In fact, I'd gone no more than 200 yards when I looked back and saw its snout in my tracks, snorting with single-minded intensity at every step.



Researchers have estimated that a bear's sense of smell is seven times as sensitive as a bloodhound's - and a bloodhound's is 300 times as sensitive as a human's. Some believe bears may be able to scent carrion from more than 100 miles away.

Battleground: A pair of bears battle for food in the Katmai National Park, Alaska. The harsh winters in the region mean bears came out of hibernation earlier, but struggle to find nutritional food

Never had the world felt so huge and so empty, so full of space without safety or refuge. And I was nothing. Just part of the food chain. Second place.



I may have whimpered. Desperate, I unbuckled my pack, thinking to sacrifice every foilwrapped package of freeze-dried food, candy bar and dried apple I had left, scattering it in my wake as a delaying tactic.



But as I fumbled for them, I pulled out the square of waterproof fabric I use as a ground tarpaulin - and I had another idea. Bears react to size, deferring to larger, stronger bears, so I fixed one corner of the tarpaulin over the end of my extended hiking pole and hid behind a thicket of berry stalks, gripping the loose tarp in one hand and the hiking pole in the other.



I could hear the bear coming for me. There was the rustle of old grass, and a stick cracked; a muffled snort came, and I eased around the brush.

Unfurling the tarpaulin, I stepped out, spreading it as wide as I could, clutching a corner with one hand and extending the hiking pole with the other, creating the largest silhouette possible.



The bear reeled back on its haunches and stared, black eyes impassive, dark nostrils flaring at the end of its muzzle.

'I could hear the bear coming for me. There was the rustle of old grass, and a stick cracked; a muffled snort came, and I eased around the brush.'



I shook the tarp and the bear drew its head into its shoulders. I had seen that same posture in bears that were being threatened by larger bears, so I did what a bigger bear would do: I charged. Yelling with what I hoped was a roar but probably sounded like a turkey call, I lunged forward, shaking the cloth.



The bear exploded. Its claws threw clots of dark earth and dead vegetation into the air as it spun and ran. I yelled and sprinted a few steps after it - then moved just as fast in the opposite direction, hoisting the pack on my back, and running.

I suddenly understood that the bear had been following my tracks on the ground so intently not because its sense of smell was so powerful, but because it was not. Whatever accident the bear had suffered had curtailed its sense of smell. otherwise it would have been able to trace me down the beach as any normal bear would have done: headup, at a dead run.



I headed down the beach into the froth of the breaking waves, praying that the wash of seawater over my tracks would mask my scent to a point where the grizzly could no longer follow me. It worked.



Two hours later I ground to a halt, exhausted. Every part of my body was in pain or trembling. And now it was time to face a different challenge: going home to repair my marriage.

A wild wilderness: Liyuya Bay in Alaska, the scene of Lynn Schooler's brush with a bear

I sailed my boat out of Lituya Bay and headed back to Juneau. At the first available village, I called my wife. There was no reply. She had walked out.



For a while, I struggled to make sense of my life, but my experiences in the wilderness had taught me useful things.



From the comfort of writing this, safe in my home, I know that there is almost no chance that the bear which attacked me is still out there. When I described the animal's almost motionless state to a biologist, he noted the behaviour was consistent with a loss of vision. The animal's odd gait indicated neurological damage.



An animal so badly wounded almost certainly died of starvation, leaving its body to be consumed by scavangers or melt away into nutrients that fertilised the grass. We are all, inevitably, a source of life for something else.



So my adventures into the stripped- back wi ldernes s reminded me that, in Nature, the life of the flock is more important than the life of the individual. And unlike bears, we humans are not natural ly solitar y creatures. My encounter with the bear reminds me that, despite what I have been through, one day I would like to be married again.

Extracted from Walking Home: a Journey In the Alaskan Wilderness by Lynn Schooler, published by Bloomsbury at £17.99. © 2010, Lynn Schooler. to order a copy for £15.99 (p&p free), call 0845 155 0720



