Escaping death by the whiskers, a hunter who was asleep in the remote Idaho wilderness woke up when he felt something tugging on his hair and discovered it was a black bear.
Stephen Vouch
The hunter, Stephen Vouch, a 29-year-old man,was in the rugged area hunting bighorn sheep with friends when it happened. He was asleep and when he woke up,he reached behind his head and felt it was wet. He yelled when he realized a bear was biting at his head.
His scream startled the bear, which jumped and hit the tarp above where they were sleeping. The tarp tumbled, entangling the animal and the hunters around 2 a.m. Vouch said his friend then took a gun and shot at the bear.
The bear, wounded by a shot from the .45-caliber handgun, scrambled into a nearby tree. Vouch, cut but not seriously injured, shot and killed it.
Vouch said he and his friends were prepared with medical supplies for emergencies but didn't have a satellite phone, so he didn't receive medical care for three days.
The hunting group patched him up, then rafted downstream before flying out of the remote Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness on Sunday. Vouch was treated at a hospital for cuts to his head and released.
It's the second time this year that someone sleeping outdoors in Idaho has been attacked by a black bear. In early September, state officials trapped and killed a black bear near McCall in west-central Idaho that bit a sleeping firefighter who had been battling blazes in the region.
Vouch said he plans to return to the area within the next several weeks to continue hunting for bighorn sheep. In Idaho, the opportunity to hunt Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep is rare — hunters are allowed to harvest only one in a lifetime.