If us Brits go for a nice big walk with our parents, the only animals we tend to worry about bumping into might be someone’s dog running about with the zoomies or some p**sed off cows, maybe even a startled deer at a push.
Big roaming bears aren’t quite in our thoughts. But for Americans and Canadians, bear attacks are something they have to be a little more prepared for.
Except when this bloke defended himself from being mauled, he ended up accidentally shooting himself.
Tyler Johnson recorded a video moments after his oops-a-daisy gun injury while out hiking off-trail with his dad in Alaska, US. Ah, America.
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The 32-year-old hunter calmly retold the events of the ‘attack’ while waiting for help, alongside the dead bear.
He explained how they ‘startled’ the animal before ‘it came changing’ at his dad.
“He made some noise, and then it went straight to me,” Johnson claimed.
And as the bear threw the bloke to the ground and bit his leg, he took hold of his 10mm pistol and started ‘unloading like a motherf**ker’ at the bear.
However, he did injure himself in the process.
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“I did shoot myself when I was falling backwards… but it went straight through my leg,” Johnson said in the clip, before showing a grim close up of his wound.
Sitting next to the dead body of the bear, he commented on it being a ‘beautiful day’ while a makeshift tourniquet kept the blood from his leg flowing out.
He told CNN that the adrenaline at the time kept him from feeling much pain to begin with.
The man explained: “To be honest, getting shot, the bear biting into me, I didn’t feel at the time.” He added that the injury felt like a pressure or a muscle spasm in his leg.
But after he’d recorded his videos of the aftermath, the pain of the gunshot wound and being seriously injured by the bear hit him like a truck.
Johnson said he did a few breathing techniques, listened to some music and recalled a previous mad hunting trip to his dad to keep his mind off of it.
“It’s those little things that try to help you through a hard moment. Realising that you’re there with the only person you would want to be there with was really comforting,” he added.
Rescue officials took him into a helicopter where he was taken to a hospital.
He later learned troopers returned to the attack spot and found a little cub in the area. At the time, Johnson had been confused as to why the bear would be so aggressive.
Jess Battison