The 19-year-old camp staffer teaches wildlife survival skills at a ranch in Colorado. His own skills were put to the test when a bear attacked him Sunday morning at 4 a.m.
Dylan, a 19-year-old camp staff member at Glacier View Ranch in Boulder County, Colorado, was helping with a children’s mountain camp early Sunday when a bear decided to wake him up – with its teeth in his head.
Dylan, a survival skills teacher who preferred to only be identified by his first name, told CBS4 that the black bear woke him up around 4 a.m., clawing his face and biting into his scalp. He and four other staff members were in sleeping bags by the lakefront.
“I never thought I would be attacked by a bear, ” Dylan told CBS4. “I woke up to a crunching sound and a lot of pain… The bear had a hold of my head and was dragging me across the ground.”
He tried to fight the bear off by hitting the bear as hard as he could and poking it in the eyes. The other staff members also tried to help scare it away, and it dragged Dylan for about 10 feet before it let go and ran off, according to CBS4.
Dylan told Denver7 that he believes the crunching sound he heard was the bear’s teeth “scraping against the skull as it dug in.”
“When it was dragging me, that was the slowest part, ” Dylan said. “It felt like it went forever.”
He was the only one injured, and has been treated and released from the hospital. He needed nine staples to one gash in the back of his neck. But the wilderness expert said the experience hasn’ t made him afraid of bears or camping.
“I’ m not afraid of the bears. I’ m not afraid of sleeping outside anymore, ” Dylan told Denver7. “You just have to be aware and respect the animals.”
Park officials are now hunting for this particular bear, saying it’s unusual for a black bear to be aggressive with humans and it will have to be euthanized.
“Once in a while, if you have a near get in a trash (can) and then go back to natural food, that’s understandable, ” Jennifer Churchill, a spokeswoman for Colorado Parks and Wildlife, told CBS4. “But when a bear is aggressive towards a person, that’s a behavior that we can’ t tolerate. It can teach that behavior to other animals. Or, the behavior could escalate.”
The bear has not yet been found. Black bears are not known to typically be aggressive, but are “curious and intelligent animals, ” according to Recreation.gov. They have a very strong sense of smell and can easily develop tastes for human and pet foods if campers feed them or don’ t properly store food.
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