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The Coast Guard helicopter crew spotted the lone man waving his arms in the air amid the Alaskan wilderness.
They had arrived just in time.
If they hadn’t seen the man, or even flew over a slightly different area, he might have finally fallen prey to the grizzly bear that had been hunting him for days.
“If we had been in the next river valley, we would have totally missed him,” said Lt. Cmdr. Jared Carbajal told the New York Times.
The unidentified man was rescued on July 16 near the small town of Nome, the coast guard said in a statement on Tuesday.
A few days before the rescue, he had been attacked by the bear. Then, every night for a week, “the bear came back to his camp and harassed him.”
The crew spotted him after seeing an SOS sign atop a shack at a mining camp, and soon after saw him waving his arms, they said.
He was found with an unspecified leg injury and chest bruising, and taken to hospital for medical treatment.
Coastguard officials told The New York Times the man, who was in his 50s or early 60s, was severely sleep deprived and nearly out of ammunition.
“At one point, a bear had dragged him down to the river,” Carbajal said. ” He had a gun. He said the bear came back every night and hadn’t slept for a few days.
Fatal bear attacks, although rare, have seen a marked increase this year in North America, according to a report by Backpacker magazine.
So far, five people have been killed by bears in 2021, up from four in 2020 and two in 2019.
Just a few weeks ago, on July 6, a 64-year-old woman was killed by a grizzly bear in Montana.
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