A college wrestler leapt on to a grizzly bear as it attacked his friend and “grabbed and yanked it hard by the ear” in a desperate attempt to save his life.
In an unusually gruesome double-attack, the beast sent both friends to the emergency room—Cummings by life-flight with horrific head injuries, and Lowry with a snapped arm and extensive lacerations.
The ill-fated day began as a shed-hunting expedition with two other teammates in the Shoshone National Forest. Towards the end of the day the group split up. Lowry and Cummings opted for a circuitous route back to their truck, at the time about four miles away, while their friends took a more direct line to the vehicle.
The pair soon found themselves in an area with particularly heavy grizzly sign. “We knew they were in there,” Lowry told MeatEater in a phone interview. “We’ve ran into them before, but nothing like this.” Unperturbed, the pair kept shed hunting. Minutes later, however, they stumbled onto several piles of steaming, fresh bear scat.
“‘Kendall, that’s a lot of fresh bear crap!’” Lowry recalled exclaiming to his friend, moments before a grizzly sow came crashing out of the bushes.
The bear tackled Lowry head-on, tossing him off a small rock outcropping and attacking his face. “I threw my arm up and it locked on,” Lowry said. “It kind of started throwing me around like a ragdoll, and I was just helpless. It snapped my arm in a couple spots.”
While successful in his attempt to disengage the bear from Lowry, Cummings had now drawn the beast’s attention to himself. Lowry described what happened next: “I roll over and the bear’s staring at Kenny. And I don’t know how bad I’m hurt. I see blood everywhere.”
Cummings had a few-second head-start on the bear, but he was quickly overtaken by the pissed-off animal. The bear dragged Cummings into the timber, at which point Lowry, still in shock, began climbing a nearby hill to a spot he knew had cell reception. He called 911 and was able to wave down their two friends, Orrion Jackson and Gus (August Harrison), who were still nearby.
“The bear’s got Kendall. Kendall could be dead,” Lowry told them. Gus instantly took off up the hill, unarmed except for bear spray, in search of Cummings.
About four minutes later, Cummings reemerged from the timber. “He came walking out of the trees and he was just drenched in blood,” Lowry remembers. “It looked like his face was just ripped off. And it was just such a relief to see him.”
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