Luck and life experience help Army veteran survive bear attack

A Massachusetts Man who survived a grizzly bear attack in Yosemite According to the National Park, there are many reasons why he is still alive, but the most important reason is luck.

Shayne Burke and his wife Chloe were on their honeymoon last spring. The couple were ready for the adventure and, as part of their preparations, read up on the dangers of bears in the area.

“Before this whole trip, I was very worried about the bears,” Burke tells Inside Edition.

“I did a lot of research myself, and that’s why we bought the bear spray for the trip,” he continues. “I practiced unlatching and relatching the safety to make sure I knew. But I mean, a grizzly bear can run 35 miles an hour, so they can get 100 feet closer in a second and a half. Tops. That’s fast.”

During their trip, Shayne went out alone to look for a rare owl that he wanted to photograph. Chloe stayed near the car with her dog Cadence.

While searching for the owl, Shayne spotted a bear cub. He knew immediately that he was in danger, but before he could do anything, the cub’s mother was upon him.

“The most dangerous bear is a female grizzly with a cub nearby, so she definitely messed me up,” he says. “When I saw the cub, my day changed completely. And it all happened in, I would say, microseconds, I saw the cub, sprayed the spray, released the safety. I look up and the mother is only a few feet away at that moment.

“I knew it wasn’t a question of ‘if,’ just ‘when and where is Mom,’ and then all of a sudden she showed up,” says Shayne.

He knew he wouldn’t be able to fire his bear spray in time, so he focused on protecting himself as best he could.

“(The bear) was pretty much on top of me at that point. It jumped up and I turned 180 degrees and it bit me right in the shoulder and grabbed me,” he says. “At that point I basically just crossed my arms, my hands and arms behind my neck and tensed my body as tight as I could. There’s no way that if that carry could have done whatever it wanted to me. At that point, there was nothing I could have done to stop it.”

Shayne says when the bear bit him on the shoulder, he let out a “bone-deep scream, and then I just buried my face in the dirt, and she kind of stopped and walked around me and then came back at me, and then she bit me on the leg, and I, what’s the word again, just gritted my teeth really hard and held on as long as I could.”

Then suddenly there was a pause and everything went quiet. The abrupt end of the attack made him wonder if he was still alive. But then he saw the bear running away. Knowing he had to move, Shayne continued into the woods.

Despite his traumatic Injurieshe could call Chloe.

“It’s absolutely surreal,” says Chloe. “I think in this case, my previous work as an EMT definitely gave me some protection from the overwhelming panic that comes over you when you get a call from your husband saying he’s been attacked by a bear.”

Since Shayne didn’t have a first aid kit with him, he was left to fend for himself until a paramedic arrived on the scene. Chloe told him to use whatever he had on him as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.

Shayne, who has been in the Army Reserve for 17 years, also brought significant and important experience.

“I was pretty sure nothing fatal had happened at that moment,” he says. “But I didn’t know exactly how much time I had, and I knew they were having trouble finding me, and it wasn’t because of their problems. All the problems were kind of mine. My phone didn’t have really good reception, so the GPS was really bad and it wasn’t giving good coordinates for some reason. So it took me a while to figure it out.”

Finally, a helicopter was able to pick him up in the forest and rescue him.

“The rescuers were on the scene, they were absolute experts at what they do,” he continues. “So I didn’t really express or feel the pain until they showed up. And then they kept telling me that I was doing a good job and not acting like a baby, but I had just been attacked by a grizzly bear.”

During his rescue, Shayne made a surprising request.

“I humbly asked them to spare the bear’s life and they said they had to do an investigation. Fortunately, they concluded that neither I nor the bear were in the wrong. So that’s a relief,” he says. “That was very important to me. I love animals and I think we all have a purpose on this planet and deserve to live in some way. And she did nothing wrong.”

Shayne’s injuries were severe and he has had to undergo nine surgeries in as many locations.

“When he arrived at the hospital, he spent about an hour in the operating theatre being stitched and stapled,” says Chloe. “We don’t have an exact number of staples, but I tried to count them at his last dressing change and we counted 58.”

Shayne says he was lucky to have survived the encounter with the bear.

“I think my biggest survival advantage was luck. It was pure chance that the bear can got stuck in my finger and wrapped around it. I’m sure the ring grip is intentional,” he says. “So that definitely helped me. I think if I had dropped the can and it had bitten me in the neck like that without it being there and then it had gotten a hold of it again, I don’t know. I don’t think I would be alive.”

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