{"id":26391,"date":"2016-09-24T00:51:26","date_gmt":"2016-09-24T07:51:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/bear-hunter-gets-mauled-by-brown-bear-on-admiralty-island\/"},"modified":"2016-09-24T00:51:26","modified_gmt":"2016-09-24T07:51:26","slug":"bear-hunter-gets-mauled-by-brown-bear-on-admiralty-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/bear-hunter-gets-mauled-by-brown-bear-on-admiralty-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Bear hunter gets mauled by brown bear on Admiralty Island"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Kentucky man was mauled by a brown bear Thursday night at the end of a day of bear hunting on Admiralty Island, according to Alaska State Troopers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe guide and his client were departing where they were hunting from, heading back down to the beach where their skiff was at,\u201d Alaska Wildlife Trooper Sgt. Aaron Frenzel said on the phone Friday afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile coming down out of the woods, they were using headlamps, and the guide and client ran into what appears to be single bear. The bear came right at him, got a hold of the client, causing non-life threatening injuries,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

Troopers identified the client as Douglas Adkins, 57, of Jenkins, Kentucky. The name of the Juneau big game guide has not been released. The pair was brown bear hunting in Chaik Bay, just south of Angoon.<\/p>\n

Adkins was mauled around 8:30 p.m. Thursday. Frenzel described it as a \u201cvicious but short attack\u201d before \u201cthe bear departed on its own.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBesides just yelling and trying to deter the bear verbally, there was no gun or pepper spray used,\u201d Frenzel said.<\/p>\n

The guide and Adkins continued down to the beach and to the guide vessel where they contacted the U.S. Coast Guard. Around 2 a.m. Friday, a Coast Guard helicopter arrived on scene and transported Adkins to Juneau\u2019s Bartlett Regional Hospital. Frenzel interviewed Adkins around 10 a.m.<\/p>\n

Because the interaction occurred in the dark, no one could tell if the bear was a sow or boar, and there wasn\u2019t any sign of a cub, Frenzel said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom what we\u2019ve gathered so far, we put it towards more of a startled response attack. It was dark out. I don\u2019t know what was being made for noise ahead of time. We don\u2019t feel like it was a predatory-type thing. It could\u2019ve been a protection of cubs, but we\u2019re leaning more towards a single bear startled response,\u201d Frenzel said.<\/p>\n

[Watch: Video of the Coast Guard hoisting bear mauling victim onto helicopter<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Frenzel and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game plan on interviewing the guide when he returns to Juneau.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless we hear something else, we\u2019re not going to go down and look for the bear. Just the way the attack went \u2014 just being a quick come in, do the initial attack and then back off and leave, and not come back or anything \u2014 we\u2019re not too concerned with this being an occurrence that will be repeated,\u201d Frenzel said. \u201cRight now, we\u2019ll probably just leave it be and tell other people in the area. I think a lot of the guides already know about it already.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan Scott, regional supervisor for ADF&G Division of Wildlife Conservation, said there are salmon streams in Chaik Bay, the area where the mauling took place.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not any different than probably just about every salmon stream on Admiralty this time of year. There\u2019s fish in the creeks, bears are fishing and so most of the coastal streams like that down near the water, they\u2019re going to be full of bears,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As of Friday afternoon, Adkins was in the hospital in stable condition, according to Bartlett Regional Hospital spokesperson Katie Bausler. Adkins denied the Empire\u2019s immediate request for an interview.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Contact reporter Lisa Phu at 523-2246 or lisa.phu@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Kentucky man was mauled by a brown bear Thursday night at the end of a day of bear hunting on Admiralty Island, according to Alaska State Troopers. \u201cThe guide<\/a> and his client were departing where they were hunting from, heading back down to the beach where their skiff was at,\u201d Alaska Wildlife Trooper Sgt. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":26392,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-26391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26391"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=26391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}