the circumstances of this attack were relatively a normal behavior
unfortunately the hunter startled the bear at a close distance now a Hayden
Idaho man who survived a grizzly bear attack in Montana is preparing to have a
second surgery Bob Legasa and his hunting partner
surprised a grizzly bear and her cub in Montana last October basically a fight
for my life and just doing whatever I could to keep her away from me and keep
those claws and those teeth away from my head he is now recovering at a hospital
in Bozeman just to warn you the images you are about to see might be considered
a bit graphic they had seen grizzly bears before just never like this cub
grizzly stood up on it reared up and growled and took off and soon as mom
heard that she was just beelining straight for us
Bob says he only had a few seconds to think
I had my arm in her mouth I'm on my
butt and she's swatting at me and I'm blocking blocking swings and kicking and yelling
while Bob struggles with a massive bear his friend grabbed some
bear spray I see Greg in the corner of my eye gives her a blast it's enough to
send the grizzly and her cub packing this red can of counter-assault
is what saved my life
so I have had a couple of I don't want to say nightmares but dreams of running bears
or charging bears and nothing that has been you know nightmarish or PTSD like
but so I did have a little bit of anxiety about coming out over here this
year I think it was on my mind when I came back hunting that even that next
week I went in I went hunting in Idaho and I felt like I really needed to get
back in the wood it was good to just you know renew to get out there and feel
comfortable again and just get back into the game
this year coming back here to Montana with Gregg it was my turn to return the
favor for Gregg not only for saving me saving my life from the grizzly bear but
also for putting me out in front as the hunter when my wife had cancer because I
only had a short limited amount of time to hunt so Gregg put me in front two
years ago made sure that I got all the the opportunities you know he put
everything out there for me and then also now with what the bear attack for saving me
Bob was gonna return the favor to me and be the caller and I was going
to be the shooter and that was the plan for the whole hunt coming into this year
and then in late January last year tore my shoulder up had to have surgery and
I'm still not quite there so I'm the caller again this year which is worked
out really well for Bob
on our first morning we chose to hunt a drainage that we've hunted many times
before it's fairly open as I really didn't want to be bused in the thicker
timber where bears like to hang we've got a response quickly we needed to move
fast before they headed up the mountain to bed as we started closing the gap we
saw his cows milling around in the timber about a hundred yards off we were
now at a standstill and couldn't move in any tighter the bull finally made an
appearance and he was about 125 yards away and already above us great ride
raking and bugling anything to get this bull to move closer to me
there's a country song in the wrong place at the wrong time and helpless now
us big bull 7x7 I thank him about trying to get right down in there and getting
up at the top I'm sure we would have been busted with those cows it didn't
take long to get onto another bull on our way in it looks like Mr. Grizz has
already been here
we ended up being above him Greg was back behind us doing his thing this bull
seemed interested as he started closing the gap moving towards Gregg's calling
he stopped about 60 yards below us giving us a show as he took out his
frustration on a sapling
just like flipping a light switch this bull lost interest and moved on
with all the excitement throughout the morning I was feeling much more at ease
walking around these mountains one thing for sure bear spray was always at the
ready
we heard a bull bugle quite a ways away from us
we went down through the creek and back up the other side and we were sneaking
into the zone where we thought the elk last bugle and just at the last second I
look up and I I see some cows further ahead of us so maybe 100-plus yards
ahead of us the Bob turns around looks at me and says there's cows just below
us too and I said we got a set up right here we can't go any further we're gonna
get busted we let out one bugle he screamed about 50 yards above us let me
just she shocked us we looked up and he was sticking his nose over the top of
that hill looking right down toward us
he kept skirting the ridge looking for this other bowl every time he would stop
it was always behind a tree
he sure didn't like that he couldn't see this other hole
after about 10 minutes he lost interest and he moved on so that's what we call
him the thrill without the kill that was awesome
I'll send that right behind us like 30 yards to screen
heard an elk bugle down in the bottom did a big circle around to get the wind in our
favor he gave out another bugle so we had a little bit better of a pinpoint we
started making a trek down and we stopped again to make our final approach
this bull bugled one more time he was not where we thought he was he was close but
we would have blown it if we would have went in right where we thought we could
he sounded like he was 200 yards away and as I got to about the tree where I
had planned on being set up I wanted to be in front of it and all of a sudden I
saw just a flick of an ear I got my glasses up on it and sure enough all the
cows were laying in the grass their ears were flicking back and forth trying to
keep the flies off of him Bob got set up I stepped back a little further and
raked a tree and then I gave him a challenge bugle and he answered
immediately
and this bull is now he's heated and he's curious so he starts making it
across through the open meadow he's probably about 60 yards out there and he
gives out a bugle and we know that game is on now
he comes over to a tree that's probably about 45 yards in front of us and he
starts raking some of the blow down that's there
I was expecting him to continue straight giving me a broadside shot but he was
coming straight on and looking right through us
a poorly placed shot is every bowhunter's nightmare I know some of us have been
here before
with the way the bull was acting this was looking better and better
I didn't want to be holding
and then not be able to shoot yeah and I thought frontal shot I'm I'm good at 20
yards but obviously not
well I sitting back here watching you and I couldn't
quite tell you I knew you could see him because you were watching with my nose
and you wouldn't turn around when I was calling so I knew you could see him and
I was hoping he was just gonna trip over tip over and then you were gonna jump up
and down but the last time you shot one when I
got to you and rusty you guys weren't all that excited so I
didn't think he killed them so hopefully hopefully that's just how to turn out
this time to that one though you saw fall down at 20 yards yeah so he knew
that was you weren't excited then I don't know how you gonna get excited if
this is a no and unfortunately a bad shot let's just hope I like the fact
that he had his head down and he wasn't feeling good because if it was a frontal
shoulder shot he's not that he's gonna keep running he's got you had something
you got something internal for him to have his head down and it was high
enough I mean I think it was at the right elevation so that it would go
through there might a hit and like you said just that's all we got to do is
have a go internalist it might have lost a lot of its penetration but it
penetrated in hopefully enough eight inches is pretty deep yeah in the chest so we'll
see what happens we gave him some time to expire and then we went to where we
last saw him
yeah thank goodness he didn't kill more than that other 60-yard
feel pretty lucky that everything came out the way that it did
it's been a real relief to get back out in the mountains and not have any sort
of anxiety about being out here in grizzly country so I've got meat in the
freezer and I've got Greg to thank for this yeah again