Welcome back to Scary Bear Attacks! Today’s episode takes us to the interior of northern British Columbia, Canada, near a small town called Gitanyow. The mountains tower to above a mile high at their peaks, and the valleys between them are broad and heavily forested. In most of these broad valleys, tangles of willow, alder and tall grasses screen deer, elk, moose and woodland caribou. You may even see American Bison browsing on grasses munching their way across meadows. Predators including cougars, wolves, coyotes and black and brown bears stalk the riparian zones to surprise their prey. It is in this setting that our episode today takes place.

On June 26th of 2019, fifty four year old Alex Woods was walking alone near Gitxsan Village just a few miles from his village Gitanyow. He was a forest pathologist and was going to check tree roots for a disease known as Armillaria Root Disease in old growth stands of forest. Alex was a lean built man who wore his silver beard trimmed short.

He had the GPS coordinates all entered into his device, but was an old school type of guy, so he just took a heading and hiked in the general direction. He had spent the last few decades in the deep woods and routinely hunted and floated the rivers.

As he walked through the foliage he noticed a freshly broken stem of a fireweed plant. Knowing this doesn’t happen unless a large animal has passed by, he took mental note to pay attention to his surroundings. He began yelling “Yo Bear!” repeatedly to let anything that was around him know he was there. He didn’t want to end up in a close range standoff with a moose, let alone a surprised bear.

A few hundred yards into his journey, Alex came up on a steep slope covered in hemlock and balsam fir, burned from a wildfire a year or two before and was open consequently. The small creek at the bottom babbled refreshed plants and animals alike, along its banks. Given the noise from the creek, Alex decided to raise his while yelling “Yo, bear” as he descended the bank.

Just beyond half way down the slope, he saw some morel mushrooms and plucked a couple for his dinner later. After he picked up the mushrooms and stood, he noticed a black bear running directly at him. It wasn’t grunting or growling. The bear didn’t have drool dripping from its lips. It simply sped toward him as if it was going to run right past him. It closed from 100 feet, when he first saw it, and quickly climbed the steep slope toward him so fast Alex wasn’t sure what he could do.

Alex quickly maneuvered himself behind a small tree with a tree laying at its trunk and began yelling at the bear. He reached his hand into his vest and pulled out his bear spray figuring that one blast from it would probably send the bear scampering in the other direction. The cap on the bear spray was stuck and he fumbled with it, trying to get to function as the bear approached him.

The next thing Alex knew, he saw a huge bear head with its mouth wide open and ready to bite into his abdomen. One thing Alex had working for him was the steep slope he was climbing down. As the bear labored up the slope, its head happened to line up for a perfect defensive strike from Alex. He yelled again, then mustered his bravery and kicked the bear as hard as he could right in the jaw. Between Alex’s kick and the steepness of the slope, the bear slid back down the slope several feet. It then began to run around the tree to get at him.

As the bear approached again, Alex yelled louder and kicked in the head as hard as he could one more time. This really rattled the bear, as it ran to a nearby tree and climbed several feet up and stared at Alex. The man was hoping that this encounter was coming to an end after the brief struggle, but in the world of bears, struggle is always part of survival.

Welcome back to Scary Bear Attacks. Thank you for helping us reach 70,000 subscribers! Today’s episode takes us to frozen north of Yukon Territory, Canada, near a small town called Mayo. It lies about 250 north of Whitehorse and is surrounded by wilderness as is the homerange of the native tribe known as the Big River People.

This area has a subarctic climate and temperatures range from -80 degrees fahrenheit in winter, which lasts about 6 months, to 97 degrees in the summer, with extremely short spring and fall seasons. This area receives about 12 inches of precipitation per year, but most of that falls in the winter season as snow. With some of the nation's highest mountains here in the Saint Elias Mountain Range, the peaks stay covered in snow year round. In the southern part of the territory Boreal forest gives way to tundra. Black Spruce, White Spruce, Quaking Aspens and Balsam Poplar provide a sheltering canopy for Caribou, Moose, Mule Deer and Elk to hide in. The predators of this area are plentiful and include wolves, Black, Brown and Polar Bears as well as cougars. It is in this setting that our story begins today.

Valerie Theoret and her companion, Gjermand Roesholt had just ten months prior, welcomed their first child, Adele into the world. She was originally from Quebec and moved here about ten years ago. She made fast friends and immersed herself in the Francophone community in the area.

Valerie was nearing the end of her maternity leave from her 6th grade teaching position, guiding children in French Immersion at Whitehorse Elementary school in Whitehorse, Yukon.

Gjermon was the owner operator of 37 years old and the owner operator of a company called Wild Tracks, which guided hunting, fishing and trapping expeditions. He was from Norway originally but blended in in the territory and its rigorous wilderness folk.

The family had purchased one of the 360 trap lines in the territory about three years ago and it was located near Einarson Lake. Here he harvested wolves, foxes, lynx and other furbearers, and she would design and sell trinkets from their fur. They would take their wares back to town and sell them at trade shows and events.

While visiting the cabin, the family would live off the land and enjoy their remote haven together. Their friends indicated that they were well aware of the dangerous animal life in the area and were very experienced outdoors people.

Running a trapline is a labor intensive and perilous pursuit. Gjermond would frequently have to leave Valerie and their daughter at the cabin while he ventured on foot or snowmobile along their trapline to harvest animals caught in them, then reset the traps to continue to catch more. This way of life was so important to them they had been discussing doing it full time and year round. Their friends described them as having the time of their lives doing what they loved together.

Given their experience, they knew they had to keep things clean around their cabin. They didn’t leave food scraps or waste around to attract unwanted visitors. However, in their shed they stored organs and entrails from animals to use in their traplines as bait. They never had a problem with animals invading it though, as would use it up as the winter passed.

On the morning of November 26th, the family ate breakfast together and enjoyed each other's company. Gjermon rounded up his trapline equipment and loaded it onto his snowmobile. The couple chatted as he got ready to do his trapline check for the day, and once he was ready, Gjermand headed, with his snowmobile leaving a distinct trail for him to follow to get back home.

Somewhere between 10 am and 3 pm, Theoret decided to take Adele for a walk and enjoy the scenery and solitude together. She bundled the baby up as well as herself, and placed the baby into the backpack carrier for the trip.

Welcome back to Scary Bear Attacks! Today’s episode takes us to Southern Siberia to a province in the Russian Federation called Tuva. This area is poverty stricken and is renown for its crime and drug abuse. The temperature here can drop to -80 degrees in the winter and over 100 degrees in the summer. The Siberian Larch, Laurel leaf Poplar and the Scots Pine are among the tallest trees here and Kites and Kestrels hunt the Chee and tufted hair grasses. A few of the common animals here are wolves, snow leopards, mountain sheep, antelope, reindeer and brown bears. It is in this wilderness setting that our episode takes place.

On June 1st of 2019, twenty nine year old Nikolay Irgit was headed out to the wilderness near his hometown of Khut, with several of his friends to gather horns and antlers that were shed by animals in the winter. Some of the animals that died in the winter would leave behind their horns that could be sold on the black market for money. This activity required a permit issued by the local government but Nokolay and his friends declined to purchase theirs as it bit into their profits.

In his everyday life, Nikolay was a school caretaker and happy father of two sons and one daughter he was raising with his twenty five year old wife, Aida. Given the condition of the local economy, Nikolay and his friends couldn’t afford firearms, nor bear spray. They didn’t even bother bringing knives along with them. They weren’t planning for any confrontations in which they may need them and wouldn’t be long in the woods. They had planned a quick trip and to return to their families by nightfall with their haul.

Shortly after arriving at the area they planned to search in, they began to spread out and looked in their own spots for antlers and horns. As Nikolay walked around for a few hours he began to push his way through some dense brush. He emerged on the far side of the bushes and glanced up. His eyes widened as a massive brown bear filled his vision, glaring at him. The bear was just a few yards away and Nikolay had walked nearly right up beside the giant bear, which was estimated to weigh around 1,000 pounds.

As soon as their eyes met, the bear flung itself toward the man letting out an ear shattering roar as it came. Nikolay clenched his fists and yelled at the bear as it advanced, hoping the bear would bluff charge him, then run away. But, if bears operated on our hopes or expectations of them, we would all be safe when we encountered them. The bear didn’t bluff charge him but opened its mouth wide and reached out for his arm. Nikolay instinctively punched the bear in the head but this didn’t even make the bear flinch, as it immediately bit onto his forearm and lept on top of him.

The bear immediately bit into his abdomen and tore at his flesh, then moved up to his chest and ripped flesh there. He was careful to point out whenever he relayed his story that the bear never clawed him, but exclusively used its powerful jaws. It apparently wanted to devour him immediately.

While being savaged by the angry bear, Nikolay didn’t smell anything. He didn’t feel anything during the attack. He began to lose any regard for his own life but thoughts of his children and wife flashed through his mind. He loved them so much and didn’t want them to be without him.

After the bear bit at his chest, it changed its savage focus to his head. It clamped its massive jaws onto his skull and began tearing his scalp just above his left forehead. One of its canines punched into his left eye orbit tearing his flesh from the middle of his eyelid back a few inches toward his temple.

At that point, Nikolay opened his eyes and his entire visual field was filled with the enormous maw of the bear gleaming with huge teeth closing over the width of his face. As the bear bit into his face he felt enormous pain shoot through his body like electricity.