Man Rescued by Alaskan Coast Guard After Surviving Bear Encounter

Brown grizzly bear walking alongside water with trees in the background

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By Inside Edition Staff

First Published: 12:09 PM PDT, July 25, 2021

After spending five days in a shack and being stalked by a grizzly bear, a man was rescued by the Alaskan Coast Guard.

An unidentified man in his 50s or 60s was rescued by the Coast Guard in Alaska.

The Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter came across the man because it had changed course to avoid cloud cover on the way to a different mission, Lt. Commander Jared Carbajal told The New York Times.

Lieutenant j.g. A.J. Hammac told the outlet he saw the man stumble out of a shack with "SOS" and "help me" written on the tin roof.

It was uncommon for the Coast Guard to come across people in need "in the middle of nowhere," according to the outlet.

“At some point, a bear had dragged him down to the river,” Lt. Carbajal told the Times.

“He had a pistol. He said that the bear kept coming back every night and he hadn’t slept in a few days.”

"He definitely looked like he had been out there for a while," Lt. Hammac said.

The man told the lieutenants he had been staying at the shack for five days — since Monday, July 12.

"He was kind of struggling. When we came around, he was on his hands and knees waving a white flag," Lt. Hammac told the Times.

In those five days, he suffered non-life-threatening injuries, including bruises and damage to his leg.

Rick Green of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, told the Times that grizzly bears were prevalent in the area that the man had been found, particularly during this time of year.

A 2019 report by Alaskan health officials stated that 68 people in the state were hospitalized for injuries sustained in 66 bear attacks between 2000 and 2017, with ten people dying as a result, according to the outlet.

The department did not have additional information about the attack or say whether it was investigating the encounter.