HORROR pictures show the terrifying injuries suffered by a surveyor after he was mauled by a bear in a wood leaving him with deep wounds to his head.
Allen Dewitt Minish, 61, was alone and surveying land in a remote part of Alaska for a real estate agent on Tuesday morning when he saw the large brown bear walking 30 feet away.
He said that it was far larger than any of the 300-pound bears he has seen in his 40 years of living in Alaska.
“I saw him and he saw me at the same time, and it’s scary,” he told The Associated Press from his hospital bed after undergoing four and a half hours of surgery.
The bear closed the gap between them instantly, charging at Minish as he tried to dodge behind small spruce trees.
Minish said he had his gun on the car but he believes the bear moved so fast that it wouldn’t have made a difference.
He said the bear simply ran through the trees and knocked aside his surveyor pole as Minish used it to try to keep the animal away.
Minish was knocked to the ground and continued to try to fight off the bear as it climbed on top of him.
“As he lunged up on top of me, I grabbed his lower jaw to pull him away,” he said.
“But he tossed me aside there, grabbed a quarter of my face.
“He took a small bite and then he took a second bite, and the second bite is the one that broke the bones … and crushed my right cheek basically.”
The bear let go and walked away as Minish believed that the animal no longer believed he posed a threat.
The surveyor said the whole encounter only lasted about 10 seconds but left him struggling to see through the blood and forced him to wait 59 minutes until emergency services could reach him.
Throughout the almost hour-long wait, he remained scared that the bear would return to attack again.
“I kept hearing stuff,” he said.
“He didn’t come back, and so I just lay there and worried about it.”
“I realized I was in pretty bad shape because I had all this blood everywhere,” Minish continued, explaining how he took off his vest and shirt to tie around his head in an attempt to stop the bleeding.
After calling 911, he was able to give the dispatcher his GPS details yet he said it was a struggle.
“It took a while to give them that because I had so much blood flowing into my eyes and onto the GPS, I kept having to wipe it all off,” he said.
Once the rescue team arrived, they also struggled to get Minish to an ambulance.
They were forced to abandon attempts to carry him through the woods and instead had to walk him a quarter-mile through swamps, brush, and trees.
He was then flown to Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage by a medical helicopter.
The mauling left Minish with a crushed jaw, a puncture wound to his scalp so deep the doctor said they could see bone, lacerations, and many stitches.
He is also currently wearing a patch over his right eye as doctors are worried about it.
However, doctors say he is now in a good condition despite the dramatic injuries.
“I guess I feel lucky,” Minish said.
“In all honesty, it wouldn’t have mattered either way. You know, if it killed me, it killed me. I had a good life; I’m moving on. It didn’t kill me, so now let’s move on to the other direction of trying to stay alive.”
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He added that there was “one lesson learned” for the encounter.
“I should have had somebody with me,” Minish said.
Alaska State Troopers have not been able to locate the bear since the attack.