A 12-year-old Wisconsin boy heroically shot and killed a 200-pound black bear that was mauling his dad while pinning him to the ground.
Owen Beierman shot the bear in its vitals, saving his 43-year-old dad, Ryan Beierman, as he was being bitten in the face in the attack in woods near the family’s western Wisconsin cabin, the dad told the Minnesota Star Tribune.
“I was flat on my back and could feel the bullet going through the bear,’’ said Ryan Beierman, who was left with a gnarly scar on his face as well as wounds on his arms and legs.
“Owen was a hero. He shot that bear and killed it on top of me.’’
The father and son had left school and work early for the hunting trip, and the preteen had earlier already shot the bear, which ran off wounded.
It was dark when they again came across the wounded bear staring at them from under an oak tree, the dad said.
“He was in a stance like a cat about to pounce,’’ Beierman told the Star Tribune. “The next thing I know, he was on me. He charged and knocked me down,” he said.
“The bear was fighting for its life, and I was fighting for mine.”
Beierman said he reached for his “sidearm initially hoping to scare the bear away with a warning shot.”
“He was only five or six feet away, point blank,” he told the outlet. “As he charged, I shot to kill. I shot eight times but missed. I had no time and I never got the gun high enough to use the sights.”
Before he knew it, Ryan was knocked onto his back and doing his best to hit the bear with his pistol.
“At that point, the bear released my leg, maybe reared back a little, and lunged at my head. All I could see were his claws and teeth. I lifted my right arm to block him. I remember the first bite. I heard a crunch,” he recalled.
“My thought was: ‘He broke my arm.’ But it was punctured, not broken. The bear was still attacking. He wasn’t going to leave me,” he added.
As the father fought for his life, he saw the flash from the muzzle of his young son’s rifle. The bullet knocked the bear off him, leaving the dad of two’s head spinning as the bear let out a final moan.
“My left cheek was sliced open and blood was oozing out of the flap. There were two fang marks in my forehead and my face was smattered with blood,” he said.
Their neighbors then stepped in to help, with one cleaning the bear and hanging it up for the family while another drove the father and son to the hospital, Ryan said.
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resouces conservation officer Dustin Gabrielson confirmed the incident with the Tribune, adding that everything about the father-son hunt was legal.
Ryan received 23 stitches to reattach his cheek. Doctors also found seven puncture wounds on his right arm and even more puncture wounds from bear bites on his leg.
“I was proud of Owen. He really held it together,” the dad said. “But after it was all over, you could tell he was pretty shaken.”
After swearing off bear hunting after the near-death experience, the dad says he is having second thoughts.
“I told my wife I was done bear hunting. Now, I don’t know, but she’ll have something to say. It was a wild ride. It was a hell of a night, to say the least,” he said.