Western Massachusetts man survives bear attack after bear bites repellent spray can

A South Hadley man is recovering in a Wyoming hospital after being attacked by a grizzly bear while hiking in Grand Teton National Park on Sunday. He owes his survival to a can of bear spray.

According to park rangers, the 35-year-old hiker, later identified by the Jackson Hole News & Guide as Shayne Patrick Burke, was hiking on Signal Mountain in the park when he apparently stumbled upon a large female grizzly bear and her cub. According to his Facebook page, Burke lives in South Hadley.

According to the newspaper, Burke told investigators he saw the cub first and was preparing to use his chemical bear repellent spray when he was attacked from the side by the mother bear. He interlocked his fingers behind his neck and held the can of bear spray with one finger. He told investigators he played dead while the bear bit him repeatedly. It was only when the mother bear bit and punctured the can of bear spray he was holding, taking a large dose of the repellent, that she stopped attacking him and ran away.

Burke posted details of the attack on his Instagram page, writing: “I thought long and hard about how I would share my story of my encounter with a grizzly bear and her cub,” he wrote. “Let me preface this by saying how much I love and respect wildlife. What happened at the top of Signal Mountain was a case of ‘wrong place, wrong time.'”

Officials said Burke appeared to be doing everything right. He was making noise as he walked through the woods, letting the bears know they were nearby. Normally, that alone would scare away any wild animal.

In an interview with the Wyoming newspaper, Burke said he had hoped to photograph a gray owl and hiked to a spot where he thought he might find one. He hadn’t seen one and was walking back to his car, talking loudly to himself and breaking branches. He was walking through a valley when he saw a cub running about 50 yards ahead of him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the mother bear approaching, pulled out his can of bear spray and screamed.

Burke, a disabled war veteran, told the newspaper that nothing he had ever experienced – “being shot at, having grenades thrown at me, having IEDs explode” – was as brutal as this bear.

Burke told the newspaper that the bear bit him on the shoulder and thigh, kicked him and repeatedly knocked him to the ground. He had his fingers interlocked, protecting his neck, when the bear came toward him, intending to bite him in the neck, Burke thought. He still had the bear spray on one finger. When she tried to bite him in the neck, she got the can instead. Her teeth pierced the can, releasing a large amount of the chemical repellent directly into her mouth. She ran away.

When he was convinced that the bear had left the area, he called his wife, who was waiting for him at the car, and she gave him instructions on how to use tourniquets on his bleeding thighs.

“I knew I didn’t have an arterial bleed, but I had to slow down the bleeding,” he told the newspaper, improvising the necessary bandages with the straps of his backpack.

He was able to call 911 and then set about shooting a video in case he didn’t make it out alive. Fortunately, a helicopter was quickly dispatched to get him out of the wilderness. He was flown to a waiting ambulance and then taken to a nearby hospital.

According to the newspaper, one of the first things he said to rangers when they found him on the mountain was, “Please don’t kill the bear. She was only protecting her cub.”

Park rangers said Burke’s description of the cub led them to believe the smaller bear was a yearling still with its mother. Grizzly bear mothers stay with their cubs for up to three years and aggressively defend their offspring.

According to the Associated Press, the grizzly bear will not be captured or killed because it may have been trying to protect a cub, park officials said in a statement.

Because of the attack, park authorities closed the 2,350-meter-high mountain to all hikers. In the event of a bear attack, areas of parks are routinely closed off.

Rangers track and research the approximately 1,000 grizzly bears in the Yellowstone area, which includes Grand Teton National Park.