Hunter Shoots Bear, Gets Critically Injured When Animal Falls On Him

A hunter in Alaska is fighting for his life after he was hospitalized with serious injuries when a bear he shot rolled down a slope and fell on him along with the debris, reports said Tuesday.

William McCormick was injured during the weekend while he and his hunting partner, 19-year-old Zachary Tennyson, were hunting near Carter Lake on the Kenai Peninsula south of Anchorage. McCormick, 28, shot a bear on a ridge above them.

The injured animal rolled down the slope, heading straight for the two men while dislodging rocks along the way, reports said. McCormick was critically injured while Tennyson survived the incident without any injuries.

Alaska Department of Public Safety (DPS) said Alaska State Troopers, Bear Creek Fire Department, Moose Pass Volunteer Fire Department, and Lifemed responded to the scene after Soldotna Public Safety Communications Center received a notification via an inReach device about two individuals in distress above Carter Lake on Saturday. McCormick, who suffered “life-threatening injuries”, was taken to an Anchorage hospital by a Lifemed helicopter.

Specialist McCormick and private (First Class) Tennyson are military personnel stationed at the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, an Air Force and Army base near Anchorage. The two were out on a recreational hunting trip about 100 miles south of Anchorage on Sept. 29 when the incident happened.

According to the state officials, the bear involved in the incident was killed. The black bear weighed about 350 pounds, a report in the Sun said.

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the state has an estimated 100,000 black bears, found in most of the forested areas. Around 1,500 bears are hunted every year in the state.

Alaska is a popular destination for hunters and is home to several species of bears including black bear and brown/grizzly bears. In order to get a hunting permit, one needs to pay an application fee and it is awarded by lottery. Drawing hunts are available to both residents and nonresidents, the website said. Other hunts, including Community Subsistence Harvest (CSH) hunts, are only available for Alaska residents 10 years of age or above.

In an unrelated incident, a judge on Sept. 24 blocked a bear hunt planned in states including Wyoming and Idaho and reinstated legal protections for grizzly bears living in and around Yellowstone National Park. Without the ruling, it would have been the first hunt outside of Alaska in the lower 48 states since 1991.

District Judge Dana Christensen passed the verdict while pointing out that around 50,000 bears used to roam the contiguous United States. According to the judge, it would be "simplistic at best and disingenuous at worst” if the state officials were to not consider the status of the grizzly population outside the Yellowstone region.

“The court’s ruling resonates with the feelings of countless Americans who believe in the protection of grizzly bears, and we’re as committed as ever to making sure that this celebrated population will be spared from the cruel and excessive trophy hunt planned by the states of Wyoming and Idaho,” Kitty Block, acting president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States.

Some state and federal officials expressed their disappointment with the ruling.

“Grizzly bear recovery should be viewed as a conservation success story," Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead said. He said Congress should make changes to the act as the ruling provided further evidence of flaws in the Endangered Species Act.