Idaho hunter bitten by grizzly describes ‘surprise’ attack: ‘Like playing tug of war with your dog’

The Idaho hunter who was attacked and bitten by a grizzly bear last week is now recounting the harrowing encounter, saying it “was like playing tug of war with your dog, but he was playing it with my arm and ripping it apart.” 

Riley Hill made the comment as doctors are now estimating it will take him two months to recover following the attack inside the Caribou-Targhee National Forest near Island Park on Sunday, Sept. 1, according to East Idaho News. 

Hill and his friend Braxton Meyers were archery hunting for elk when the bear lunged at him. An investigation of the attack revealed that the “hunters acted in self-defense during a surprise encounter with the bear from a very close distance,” Idaho Fish and Game officials said.   

Hill told East Idaho News that the incident began with a “loud thud” and that he heard Meyers yell “Oh crap, that’s a bear!” 

IDAHO GRIZZLY BEAR ATTACKS HUNTER IN ‘SUPRISE ENCOUNTER’ 

The 20-year-old then reportedly dropped his bow and using a handgun, managed to fire off four shots at the bear before it sank its teeth into his arm and started flinging him around. 

Meyers, using his own firearm, then started to shoot at the bear. 

“I was having to pick my shots [carefully]” Meyers told East Idaho News. “By then, the bear’s on top of Riley, and Riley’s shoulders are between [its] front feet and his legs are kind of kicked out from its stomach… I couldn’t see anything Riley was doing. I just could see the bear on him.” 

“When Braxton hit it, I could feel the bullets hitting the bear through my arm,” Hill also said. “[It] wasn’t hitting my arm, but I could just feel the repercussion from the bullets hitting the bear.” 

A total of 24 bullets were used to take down the bear, East Idaho News reports. The website says Meyers used his first aid skills that he remembered from Boy Scouts to apply a tourniquet around Hill’s arm before he was airlifted to a local medical facility. 

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The hunters later told East Idaho News that they learned the bear had a reputation among local ranchers for killing their livestock, and it was dubbed the “King of the Hill.” 

“This bear has always been a problem up there of cattle, and there’s a lot of farmers that… [are] pretty happy with us because we took out the bear that was eating their cattle,” Hill said. 

“It was a fighting bear,” Meyers added. “Another bear or some animal had torn one of its ears off. That was the ear that was facing up the hill, and so it didn’t hear us coming down until we were on the side that had the good ear, and that’s when it got up and come at us.” 

The bear reportedly was startled as it was burrowing in a day bed. 

Meyers is now preparing for an Oct. 12 wedding with his fiancé, in which he’s asked Hill to be his best man. 

“A lot of people say they’ll take a bullet for a friend. Well, I got mauled by a bear for mine,” Hill told East Idaho News.