A Walla Walla man is home with his wife and two little girls after a brown bear tried to take his face off on a caribou hunt last week.
Jadon Nicoara, 27, and his cousin Daniel were four days into a caribou hunt on Alaska’s North Slope—about 100 miles southwest of Deadhorse, near the Colville River. They’d glassed a herd in the distance and were climbing the lip of a canyon on a steep hillside to close the gap when the pair noticed the bushes above them begin to move.
“I don’t know if I said it or thought it, but I was like, ‘caribou,’ and I turned around to my right and there was a bear just running at probably 15–20 feet straight toward me,” Nicoara told Alaska’s News Source. “It was growling, its mouth was open and it was just running full speed.”
Before he could shoulder a rifle or even set his feet, the bear hit him like a middle linebacker, throwing him backwards down the hill. The bear pursued the fallen hunter with vigor and began working him over, starting with his arm and moving to his face.
“It was just biting again and again, and I could hear all the bones crunching in my nose, and I saw stars,” Nicoara said. “I was like, ‘okay, this is kind of where it ends.’ I thought I was going to be dead.”
Jadon Nicoara
The vicious attack didn’t remain concentrated on his face as the brown bear soon moved down his body, grabbed his hands, then a foot. It was at this moment when Daniel was able to bring a handgun into the fight and emptied his magazine at the animal that was still tangled up with his cousin.
Pulling attention away from Jadon, the bear peeled off his initial victim and went after his mag-dumping cousin.
“That’s like one of the most sinking feelings ever,” Daniel said. “When I was shooting at it, and all of a sudden they whipped around, and it looked at me…”
As the bear quickly hit Daniel, he lost control of his pistol and was now face-down with his hands over the back of his neck praying that playing dead would convince the bear that the threat was neutralized.
Thankfully, his beaten and battered cousin Jadon was able to get his hands on his own revolver, and squinting through blood-soaked eyes, put a few rounds on target, prompting the bear to finally flee.
Jadon Nicoara
With one major threat neutralized, the pair now were faced with the challenge of getting off that mountain alive. Daniel’s medical training afforded him the opportunity to get Jadon’s bleeding under control before the pair undertook a half-mile hike to a spot where their satellite phone could punch an SOS into the sky. Jadon recounted that, at the time, he was not convinced that he could make the evac and pulled his phone out to film a short farewell video he hoped would make it to his wife and daughters if he didn’t.
“I was like, ‘oh my goodness, I don’t know if I’m going to make it because I’m bleeding pretty good.’ We were praying, and I was thinking about my girls. I was like, ‘I need to make it home,’” Nicoara said. “I just remember at one point looking around, and it was like a gorgeous day. I’m like, ‘how did this even happen? It’s so surreal.’”
With a bit of grit, the two men were able to make it to the rendezvous point and were swiftly airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle where they were both treated for their injuries. Daniel took some treatment for lacerations on his arm and backside while his cousin Jadon made it out miraculously with his eyesight, although his face is still in need of reconstruction.
“I’m very thankful to be alive,” he said. “Glad to have my eyesight and the use of all my limbs. God is very good.”
