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ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- An Alaska man survived 10 seconds of terror after a chance meeting with a large brown bear in a remote part of Alaska.
Allen Minish was mauled during the brief attack and is now recovering at an Anchorage hospital.
The mauling happened Tuesday near the small community of Gulkana, about 190 miles northeast of Anchorage.
The 61-year-old man told KTUU that he was surveying land for work when he looked up and saw the bear about 30 feet away from him. That’s when it attacked.
The bear crushed his right jaw and left him with puncture wounds and lacerations, including one scalp wound so deep that a doctor saw bone.
"So, I grabbed his lower jaw, punctured my hand with a lower molar, but he couldn't close his mouth,” Minish told KTUU from the hospital. “And all he did was barely scratch the top of my hand with his upper one. Then he twisted his head so fast, it knocked my hand free, and when he did that, he lunged, grabbed my head, took the first bite, relaxed, and then he took the second bite, that was stronger."
The bear walked off after the chance encounter and Minish tried to stop the bleeding from his head while waiting nearly an hour for help to arrive.
Minish told KTUU that he now has around 100 stitches on his head, gashes across his body and trauma to recover from. He’s hoping to leave the hospital soon and return to work as early as next week.
