SANTA FE – For the second time this week, a black bear has attacked and injured someone in northern New Mexico, this time an elk hunter who had staked out a watering hole west of Wagon Mound.
The 60-year-old Missouri man licensed for an archery hunt was treed Thursday by a mother bear that showed up with a cub.
He received bites to his foot through his boot when the bear climbed up after him, despite the hunter first firing a warning shot with a pistol to try to scare the animal away and then four shots at the bear, according to state Game and Fish Department game warden Clint Henson.
The man had climbed down from a tree stand to eat lunch when the bears came to the watering hole. He took photographs and video of the bears before the attack, and said he had seen five other bears that morning.
At some point during the encounter, Henson said, the hunter fell 15 feet from the tree but was able to climb back up.
After the bite victim radioed for help from a ranch guide, he was found nearly at the top of tree, about 50 feet off the ground. He was taken to Alta Vista Hospital in Las Vegas, N.M., where he was treated and released.
On Wednesday evening, a jogger was attacked on a trail near Los Alamos, also by a mother bear traveling with a cub. The 55-year-old man was knocked into a streambed, and the mama bear bit and clawed at his head.
The Los Alamos man suffered deep flesh wounds and scratches to his head, chest and hands, and required hospital treatment.
There have now been four reported bear-on-human attacks in New Mexico since June that resulted in injury, and a fifth where the bear was shot and killed. Game and Fish online sources from prior years indicate that two or three such incidents annually is not unusual.
Henson said he couldn’t speculate on the spate of bear encounters over the past few months. “Every situation has been different,” he said.
Henson said some details of Thursday’s incident near the community of Ocate were unclear, but that the hunter went up and down the tree three times during his bear encounter.
He fired the warning shot while he was still on the ground, put his pistol in his pocket and then fired the four shots at the bear from the tree. Game and Fish doesn’t know if the bear was hit, but two rounds from the pistol were found at the scene, said Henson.
The hunter “was just yelling at the bear, and eventually the bear got tired and decided to go do something else,” Henson said. The Missouri man had hunted in the area several times before and knew the “tank,” or watering hole, site well, according to Henson.
Officers used dogs to search for the bear soon after the attack, but rain diluted the scent. A trap was set in the area.
Around Los Alamos, the search for the bear that attacked the jogger Wednesday was suspended Friday because dogs could not find a scent.
In June, there were two bear attacks in the Lincoln National Forest in southern New Mexico. A 55-year-old Lincoln County man was attacked when he surprised a bear while looking for antler sheds in thick brush, and suffered deep wounds to his chest and a bite to his leg.
A few days later, another man searching for antlers shot and killed a bear that he said was charging after the man encountered the animal while coming over the top of a hill.
Then, in July, a bear described as a juvenile bit a teenage girl while she was sleeping in a tent in a neighborhood yard during a family gathering just outside of Raton. She suffered wounds to an arm and an ear.
Comment