John Casteel has a rattling good looking companion. The 40-year-old Alaskan native spends loads of time along with his pal Chad Felts, industrial salmon fishing all summer season and chasing moose collectively within the fall. However it wasn’t till two weeks in the past that he acquired to see what his pal was actually product of.
On the night of Sept. 9, Casteel was mauled by a brown bear whereas he and Felts have been moose looking alongside the Nushagak River. Casteel was pinned on his stomach, along with his rifle out of attain, whereas the bear tore into him, biting deep into the person’s arm, again, and left leg because it shook him aspect to aspect. Felts may hear the screaming and growling, and after working to his pal’s assist with a scoped rifle in his hand, he took purpose, and fired.
“The bear was growling, chewing on my legs and on my again,” Casteel tells Outside Life from a hospital mattress in Anchorage. “And the way in which I felt was: Both I used to be gonna die or that bear was gonna die. And I’m fairly certain you already know the end result of that.”
Working Upriver
Casteel’s household has lived in Dillingham for at the least 4 generations. Situated on the mouth of two main salmon rivers—the Wooden and the much-larger Nushagak—the city is among the predominant industrial fishing hubs in Bristol Bay. And whereas it’s residence to a small airport and a year-round inhabitants of a little bit greater than 2,000 individuals, that is nonetheless the Alaskan bush—a spot the place berry choosing, salmon fishing, and moose looking are intertwined with on a regular basis life.
So, on Friday Sept. 9, when Casteel and Felts knew the tides could be excessive sufficient for them to make it to their spike camp on the Nushagak, Casteel left early from his job on the native hospital and loaded up their aluminum skiff. Setting out from Dillingham within the late afternoon, they introduced alongside Felts’ mother and one other girl.
After working throughout the inlet and up the braids of the decrease river, they lastly reached their camp close to Portage Creek. With just a few hours of daylight left, the group determined that the 2 girls would keep in camp whereas the boys headed a quarter-mile upriver to scout for moose.
“A few week earlier than, somebody had acquired a moose in that space, a couple of half-mile stroll inland from the river,” Casteel says. “So we determined we’d head as much as the place the moose had been killed and simply scope out the world.”
After working upriver and tying off their boat, the 2 males labored their approach inland. Every of them carried a rifle. Casteel had a tough thought the place they have been headed, and the 2 stayed shut to 1 one other as they hiked via stands of spruce and brush that broke up the stretches of open tundra. After a couple of half hour, they the place approaching one other patch of bushes when Casteel saved strolling straight and Felts broke off to the fitting.
The 2 males have been nonetheless separated when Casteel stopped in his tracks. He observed a big brown form within the brush simply forward of him. Then he noticed the fur transfer.
“I had a sense that no matter it was I acquired its consideration,” Casteel says. “And earlier than I do know it, there was the bear.”
Casteel had stumbled proper up on the kill website, and he was 25 yards away from a scavenging brown bear. It was too late to keep away from a cost now. There was no undoing what had been performed. Performing on a reflex, Casteel shouldered his Remington .270 and shot the bear sq. within the chest.
“The bear was dealing with me on the time. And it acquired mad. It acquired actually mad,” he says. “So I put one other bullet in and shot as quick as I may. Then I went to run away, however as quickly as I circled, I tripped. And that’s when the bear acquired me.”
Felts to the Rescue
Together with his rifle tossed apart, Casteel lined the again of his head along with his fingers because the bear sunk its enamel into the meat of his left thigh. It bit him time and again as he screamed for assist.
“That’s when my companion got here up and began taking pictures the bear off me,” Casteel says. “He got here a little bit nearer as a result of he was afraid of taking pictures me, and the bear was chewing me up and shaking me backwards and forwards. He fired three pictures.”
After listening to the pictures, Casteel says he can remembers wanting over his shoulder because the bear took a number of steps again and fell over, touchdown proper on prime of his rifle.
The very first thing Felts did was take off his belt and trend a tourniquet round Casteel’s higher thigh. Then he grabbed his inReach and texted Casteel’s dad in Dillingham. He ultimately discovered his companion’s rifle beneath the useless bear and shot it as soon as extra for good measure. Then they acquired the hell out of there.
“Chad mentioned we have to get out of right here, you may’t die on me,” Casteel says. “I don’t even understand how he held me up, however he dragged me out of the forest. I had my proper arm round his neck and I held onto the belt with my left hand.”
After they acquired to the following opening, Casteel collapsed from the ache in his leg and couldn’t go any additional. Felts gave him again his .270, sprinted all the way down to the boat and ran for camp, the place he picked up his mother, who’s a skilled nurse. By the point they discovered Casteel once more, Felts had heard again from his dad. He advised him a Coast Guard helicopter was on its approach from Kodiak Island, however that it will take at the least two hours to get there.
As they waited for the helicopter, Felts helped his mother clear Casteel’s wounds and wrap them in gauze. They constructed a hearth close by, taking turns warming their coats within the flames and wrapping them round Casteel, who was displaying signs of shock. Blood was pouring out of the holes in his leg, and he sweated uncontrollably because the darkness set in round them.
“We simply waited, and it acquired darker and darker,” Casteel says. “However once we heard that helicopter, boy, it sounded so nice.”
Recovering in Anchorage
Casteel by no means misplaced consciousness as he was flown to the airport in Dillingham. After medical doctors acquired him stabilized on the native hospital there, they medevacked him to Anchorage, the place he was admitted into the vital care unit on the Alaska Native Medical Heart. By Saturday morning, Sept. 10, he was in his first surgical procedure. It wouldn’t be the final.
Though he was nonetheless mendacity in a hospital mattress 10 days later, Casteel says he took his first two steps utilizing a walker on Tuesday. He additionally had a particular customer that day.
“My buddy Chad, he got here to Anchorage, and he introduced me footage of the bear’s cranium,” Casteel says. “I may see how huge the enamel have been that penetrated my pores and skin, and it was a giant bear—it ended up having a 25 and ½ inch head. Oh my Gosh, I used to be simply so grateful for him.”
