--- title: "We salute the aircrew that rescued a man from a bear attack in a real-life version of ‘The Revenant’" description: "A man was attacked by the same bear for a week at an Alaskan mining camp before the Coast Guard rescued him." date: "2021-07-22" modified: "2021-07-23" authors: - name: "Jared Keller" job_title: "Former Managing Editor" link: "https://taskandpurpose.com/authors/jaredkeller/" url: "https://taskandpurpose.com/tech-tactics/coast-guard-rescue-bear-attack-alaska/" categories: - "Around the World" - "Coast Guard" - "Military Branches" - "News" - "Rescue" - "Tactics" - "Tech & Tactics" - "United States" --- # We salute the aircrew that rescued a man from a bear attack in a real-life version of ‘The Revenant’ ![]() *Left, a screenshot from the film "Revenant," right, a photo of the mining camp in Nome, Alaska, where a man was rescued after being harassed by a bear for days on end. (Revenant/U.S. Coast Guard)* Getting attacked by a bear is one thing. Getting attacked by the same bear repeatedly, however, is the stuff of both nightmares and films starring [Leonardo DiCaprio.]() This was the experience of one unidentified man at a mining camp in Alaska before the Coast Guard rescued him last week, [according]() to a news release from the service. On Friday, a Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter aircrew, operating out of Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak, was en route to a training mission when they spotted an S.O.S sign on top of a shack roughly 40 miles outside the city of Nome, Alaska, the New York Times [reported](). The aircrew quickly landed and made contact with the man, who "requested medical care after being attacked by a bear a few days earlier," [according]() to the Coast Guard release. "The man reported that the bear had returned to his camp and harassed him every night for a week straight." ![]() *A remote mining camp near Nome, Alaska, where a Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak aircrew rescued the survivor of a bear attack, on July 16, 2021. (U.S. Coast Guard)* According to the service, the man appeared to have suffered bruising to his torso and a non-life-threatening leg injury during the encounter. “At some point, a bear had dragged him down to the river,” Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Jared Carbajal, one of the pilots of the helicopter, [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 only had two rounds left,” Coast Guard spokeswoman Petty Officer First Class Ali Blackburn told The Times. “I’d imagine you’d be a little loopy after not sleeping for so long.” Bear attacks are obviously no joke in Alaska. According to a 2019 [report]() by published by the state, 68 people were hospitalized for injuries sustained during bear attacks between 2000 and 2017, with ten people dying as a result of their injuries. Two soldiers at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson were mauled by bears in [two separate incidents]() in the same summer a few years back. Still, it's hard to read the Coast Guard's accounting of the rescue and not immediately think of the 2017 epic film *The Revenant*, which saw Leonardo DiCaprio endure an intense run-in with a CGI bear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOlVRHsVzE4 Luckily, this incident turned out significantly better for the unnamed man in Alaska, even if it was clearly a harrowing one. “He was kind of struggling. When we came around, he was on his hands and knees waving a white flag," Lt. j.g. A.J. Hammac, the co-pilot of the Coast Guard helo, [told]() the New York Times. “He definitely looked like he had been out there for a while." Mark my words: [those bears are up to something, and the military better be ready to deal with them in the long term — or else](). ## More great stories on Task & Purpose - **An Air Force colonel told a crew** [**they failed America because they nixed an unsafe training flight**]() - **The Navy SEAL who shot Bin Laden is hyping a new brewery.** [**We tried their beer so you don’t have to**]() - **U.S. Marines have to take official photos** [**for no logical reason whatsoever**]() - **A woman has qualified as the** [**Navy’s first female special operator**]() - **An Afghan interpreter who helped US troops may be** [**condemned to die over a minor paperwork error**]() - **Airmen and vets are divided over a new study showing the** [**Air Force’s anti-beard policy**]() **damages careers** ## Author Jared Keller is the former managing editor of Task & Purpose. His writing has appeared in Aeon, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the New Republic, Pacific Standard, Smithsonian, and The Washington Post, among other publications. ### Author social links [Twitter]() [Facebook]() [LinkedIn]() [Instagram]()