Brown Bear Attack Leaves Alaskan Hunter with Bite and Bullet Wounds

His story has since gone viral on both social and traditional media, and he spoke with MeatEater over the phone to give us the nitty gritty details.

“I didn’t register anything,” Tyler Johnson, 32, said of the moment the bear tackled him to the ground. “The only thing going through my head was get the gun out of the holster, get the gun out of the holster, holster, holster, holster, on top of me, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot.”

Johnson and his father, Chris Johnson, an Alaska Wildlife Trooper and former USFWS officer, were hunting black bears along the Resurrection Pass Trail in the Kenai Mountains on August 17, 2024. They had never hiked the trail before, and they hadn’t spotted any black bears in the two days they’d been in the area.

“We did see signs of animals. I thought it was a moose, I saw some moose prints. But looking back, it was probably a belly dragging on the ground because the grass was laid down. It was convenient for us because it was following the path we were looking for,” Johnson said.

The area was covered in thick grass about chest high. They came to a dense section of brush and grass but found a funnel 10 to 15 yards long that led them through. There was no breeze at the time, and Johnson remembers that the bugs were buzzing around their heads.

Chris Johnson made his way through the funnel and Tyler was just behind him when they heard the sound no one wants to hear in the backcountry.

“It was at that moment the bear announced it was there, about 15 yards away,” Johnson said. “If you’ve heard a brown bear growl before, you know it makes you stop doing… everything. Even breathing.”

The bruin began to charge at Chris, who yelled and turned his back so the bear would grab his pack first. But, for whatever reason, the bear wheeled around before reaching Chris and went after Tyler.

“It planted its feet and turned towards me. I don’t know if it knew I was there until it did, and I was between it and the path it took through that brush,” Johnson said. “From growling to impact on me was about four seconds. It wasn’t even a warning, it was ready to rumble right then and there.”

Johnson carried a 10mm Springfield XD-M Elite handgun in a thumb strap holster on his hip, and the gun held 15 rounds of full metal jacket bullets. He remembers desperately trying to unholster the gun, but his thumb slipped and he wasn’t able to get it out before the bear took him to the ground.

“It tackled me, my feet were up in the air. My dad couldn’t even see me because it absolutely laid me out,” he said.

He managed to unholster the pistol and bring it to bear while also using his legs to push the bear away from him. He fired seven rounds at the bear’s head and chest, and in the course of doing so, shot himself in the left thigh.

The initial report from the Alaska Department of Public Safety said that one of the hunters had been shot “during attempts to stop the attack,” and some assumed one of the hunters had shot the other. But that’s not at all what happened.

“My dad didn’t shoot me,” Johnson said. Instead, his dad got into position so he wouldn’t hit his son in the crossfire and unloaded his Glock 40 10mm handgun. “He was blasting it, probably in the ass, until it turned around on the ground and he emptied the rest of his clip in the head,” Johnson said.

“I remember seeing a pissed off bear, and then I remember seeing a bear that was dying,” Johnson said. “And that’s when I was able to get out from under it. There must have been something I hit that did what I needed to do.”

When the dust settled, Johnson had a through-and-through bullet wound in his left thigh, two puncture wounds in his right calf where the bear had bit him, a gash in his right thigh, likely from the bear’s claws, and another claw mark on his left shoulder. But with the adrenaline still pumping, those injuries weren’t all obvious right away.

“I looked at my right calf, and my boot was being filled up with blood. It was a shock because I still didn’t feel it,” he said.

He found out about the gash on his right thigh when he reached into his pocket to take out a can of herbal energy dip.

“I reached into my cargo pocket, and my hand goes through a hole. I pull out the Teaza can, and there’s a perfect claw mark in it and all the dip funnels out of it, and I’m like, ah shit, he got my can!” Johnson recalls.

The pair had brought trauma kits that included QuikClot and tourniquets, and they immediately began making sure the younger man wouldn’t bleed out. They applied QuikClot and tourniquets to the wounds, and Chris called emergency services using his InReach device. Johnson estimates that it took about an hour and a half for him to be airlifted to the hospital.

When asked what he learned from the experience or what advice he has for other backcountry hunters, he named three things: bring a trauma kit, a gun, and a hunting buddy.

“If I didn’t have that trauma kit, there’s a whole bunch of what-ifs. I wouldn’t have had QuikClot or a tourniquet. It’s not a big kit. I’d suggest it to every hunter. It could save your life even if you don’t have someone else there,” he said.

As for his firearm, he acknowledges that in some instances, bear spray would be effective. “But in my situation it wouldn’t have worked,” he said. “It was too fast. I would have been bear spraying myself and getting mauled. That doesn’t sound fun. My 10mm did work. I’m not going hiking without that again.”

Lastly, while solo hunting can be an incredible experience, Johnson thinks it’s too much of a risk in bear country.

“People do go hunting by themselves, and if that’s a risk they’re willing to take, great. But I don’t know if I would have made it out by myself. Having a good partner, and you both know how to operate satellite communication, I would say that’s essential,” he said.

Johnson is unsure exactly why the bear decided to attack. He believes he may have been standing between the animal and the path it planned to use to escape, but he also told us wildlife officers found a cub in the area when they went to examine the scene.

This is the third reported grizzly attack on a human in the United States this year, but it’s not the first in the past few years to involve a self-inflicted gunshot wound. In 2022, a Wyoming hunter shot himself in the leg in the exact same scenario. As the bear knocked him to the ground, he put his foot up to stop the bear from biting him, and he shot himself in the lower extremity.