The Raging Hunter Saved my Life, Part 2

By Tana Grenda

This is part 2 of Tana Grenda’s encounter with a Boone and Crockett brown bear in Alaska. You can read Part 1 here

After the bear dipped down below the horizon in front of us at 200 yards, Trevor whispered, let’s run. The adrenaline hit.

We left our gear and grabbed the weapons and took off running.

At this point, the bear could not see us. We had to get our distance and give him time to die.

We ran for our lives over the hill through knee deep snow. I was carrying the jammed rifle, and Trevor had the bow and pistol. I kept looking behind me to make sure the bear was not on my heels. Trevor stopped in a panic and turned back to me.

“The pistol. IT’S GONE.” My heart sank again.

Trevor had our Taurus Raging Hunter 454 Casull revolver strapped to his chest. While running, it flew out of his chest holster into the snow. We looked around for a few seconds and thankfully found a piece of the handle sticking out of the snow, grabbed it, and kept running. We found the first cover we could, a couple small, 4 foot rocks in the snowy basin. We hid behind the rock and looked back.

No bear.

Trevor wanted to keep running.

I turned to him and told him he had to finish this, that we could never outrun a bear.

The only thing we had to protect us was five, 360 grain buffalo bore rounds in a 454 casull. We doubted it would save us, as we just watched it eat three big rifle bullets like a bee sting.

Just then, we both looked up. Cresting the hill, practically stepping on our gear and in our tracks was the boar. He was spewing blood out both sides and was extremely angry. His eyes locked with ours at 150 yards.

What happened next was something I cannot explain, but I can picture it like it was yesterday. The instant he saw us, he got a huge adrenaline hit and he came at us, full speed, faster than I’ve ever seen a bear move.

I hid behind the rock. I glanced up again. He was now 30 yards away, barreling at me. I could see his eyes locked on mine.

His fat body and thick fur was bouncing up and down with every lunge as the snow flew up around him. 

His jaw was hanging open and his lips were so big and heavy they hung over his teeth and spewed spit and blood everywhere. 

He was coming to kill us.

My life actually flashed before my eyes, then I saw my family.  

I heard a couple gunshots, and peeked over the rock. He was not slowing down. Now 5 yards away, and one lunge from coming over the rock and tearing my throat out, I had the thought… This is it. This is how I die. 

I said goodbye to my husband and kids and braced for impact.

I heard one more shot but felt nothing. I peeked over the rock once more and saw that he turned and was now 10 yards away and hurting bad, so I hit record to video the last and final shot into his side before he hunched and disappeared behind that rock and down the hill. I heard a snow slide so I knew he slid away from us, but I did not know if he was dead.

We were out of bullets in the revolver but had an extra 5 to spare.

We needed time to reload. So we ran uphill for our lives. If he was wounded, he would at least struggle coming back up. We did not know if he was dead and did not want him to see us again.

We ran as hard as we could, again. I was so sick from fight or flight that I kept falling in the deep snow.

“Tana, this is life or death, we gotta RUN!”

Trevor screamed at me.

I almost gave up when I had one more adrenaline hit, lunging through thigh-deep snow to get me to the next rock. We hid there. We waited for what seemed like an eternity. We still could not see him. The incredibly cold wind howled.

I curled up in the fetal position, wondering if I would make it through the night. We needed to get more distance from the bear, so we kept running uphill and found another small rock to hide on. At this point, the storm was hitting. It was blowing 40-50 miles an hour with wind chills in the negative temperatures. We were soaked to the bone and sick from adrenaline.

We waited over 30 minutes before we side-hilled back to our gear. This is where we saw him track us with his blood trail brushing against my backpack. I was sickened by the sight. We still had not found him and were not sure we were going to make it out alive.

I fell to my knees when Trevor, pointing downhill, said “is that him?”

I pulled out the binoculars. Sure enough, there was a big blob at the bottom of an avalanche slide I heard after the last shot. He had been there for about 45 minutes and did not appear to be moving. And that is when we realized we just survived a bear attack.

In disbelief, we both sat in silence trying to process what just happened. But it was now 7pm at night, 4 hours from dark, in bear country, and still had to skin the bear, pack it out down clif lines, survive the night, and the entire next day through a storm with just 5 more pistol rounds, minimal dry clothes and a tarp.

We both skinned the bear in silence. We could not eat. 

We did not want to take pictures. The smiles were forced. We did not care about any of it. We were so thankful we were alive, but we were in shock. We just wanted to get out of there.

The hurricane winds continued, but this time the sideways rain hit hard, for the next 24 hours. I am not sure if there was a dry spot on our bodies.

We loaded up our soaking 100 pound packs quickly as darkness fell.

We needed to navigate the cliffs down the same way we came up or we would not make it down without major injury. It was a very uncomfortable, unnerving 2500 foot drop to the creek bottom, covered in bear blood, with a jammed rifle.

 We finally made it to the creek bottom at 1:30am. We were exhausted after a 19 hour trek. The storm now felt like a monsoon. We had to get dry.

We set up the small glassing tarp on the rock creek bottom and tied the tarp down to big rocks, which were still lifting with the heavy winds and sideways rain.

We ditched out soaked clothes and cuddled together under that tarp until daylight in our dry puffies and dry socks. I was curled up in the fetal position, on the verge of hypothermia, shaking violently through the night. We survived the bear, but we still had to fight through hypothermia and a big storm.

At daylight, we sat there under the tarp, still in disbelief. The weather was Alaska’s finest. It was still raining sideways with fog to the ground and heavy winds. It would be a whole day to get back to base camp, a feat that currently seemed impossible. 

I skinned the feet out of Trevor’s hide to save some weight and we loaded up all of our soaking wet belongings and hiked out of death mountain.

We hiked all the way out on adrenaline and made it back to base camp at nearly 6pm that night. The 10-second clip of that bear charging us replayed in our heads over and over through the entire pack out. The rain did not stop until we finally reached the tent. Pulling on dry clothes and crawling into warmth never felt so good.

That’s when it finally hit me. We were alive!

This bear squared over 10’6” nose-to-tail, with a skull measuring 28 1/2”, making Boone & Crockett. A true giant of the Alaska Peninsula.

And yet, in the end, none of that mattered to us.

Not the size, the record book, or the photos.

What mattered was that we made it home.

People always ask what gun I trust in bear country now, and my answer comes easy.

When the rifle failed at the absolute worst possible moment, the only thing standing between us and a charging brown bear was our last gun standing, our Taurus Raging Hunter. A .454 Casull with five rounds in freezing temperatures and a huge angry brown bear under 10 yards.

That revolver did exactly what it needed to do when our lives depended on it.

In Alaska, gear isn’t about trends or opinions. It’s about what still works when everything goes wrong. After that day on the mountain, I learned a lesson I’ll never forget:

The gun you actually carry and trust with your life matters more than anything else.