Bear mauls hunter on Hinchinbrook
SKETCHY: Anchorage man reportedly hospitalized after sow with cub attacked him.
By Craig Medred
Anchorage Daily News
(Published: November 27, 2002)
An Anchorage deer hunter was reported to be in a hospital here Tuesday after being attacked by a brown bear on Hinchinbrook Island west of Cordova, but details were sketchy.
Alaska State Trooper spokesman Greg Wilkinson identified the hunter as 36-year-old Michael Harmening, a surveyor who lives on the Hillside. A woman who answered the phone at Harmening's home Tuesday confirmed that he'd been mauled by a bear and said that he was at Providence Alaska Medical Center.
The Alaska Air National Guard reported delivering him there after a helicopter evacuation from Hinchinbrook to Cordova, and a flight by a C-130 aircraft to Anchorage late Monday.
A Providence nursing supervisor, however, said there appeared to be no record of treating Harmening. Neither of Anchorage's other hospitals reported him as a patient, either.
State Fish and Wildlife Protection officers were on their way to Hinchinbrook Island Tuesday to try to figure out what happened. Wilkinson said it appears Harmening might have been attacked by a sow and a nearly grown cub around midday Monday.
"The sow is dead," Wilkinson said.
The Fish and Wildlife Protection office in Cordova and area wildlife biologist Dave Crowley with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said no one knew what had happened to what was reported to be a 2-year-old cub with the sow.
Wilkinson said Harmening told a trooper in Cordova that he'd been charged by the cub, and snapped off a "hip shot" in its direction.
"He's not sure whether he hit it or not," Wilkinson said.
Air National Guard Sgt. Kenneth Bellamy, one of several people involved in evacuating Harmening from Hinchinbrook, said the hunter was with a friend when they stumbled into a sow and a cub.
The sow, Bellamy said, "just grabbed him by the leg and flung him."
It was after that, Bellamy added, that Harmening and his friend apparently killed the bear and begun trying to summon help. The short-range radios the men had were just good enough to reach from a Forest Service cabin on the east side of the island to the fishing vessel Morning Thunder at Johnstone Point.
Vessel owner Michael Glasen said he used another radio on his boat to relay a call to the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard notified the Air National Guard.
"I don't know very much," Glasen said. "We just helped those folks at the cabin communicate with the Coast Guard. I didn't actually meet those folks, so I didn't see firsthand."
Fish and Wildlife troopers had yet to complete an investigation of the incident. It is legal to shoot a bear in self-defense in Alaska, but a defense of life and property report must be filed, and the hunter is required by law to salvage the hide and skull for the state.
No report had been filed Tuesday. Given that Harmening was hurt, troopers said they were going to try to take care of skinning the bear. The state usually sells the hides at an annual auction.
Crowley, the wildlife biologist, noted that brown bears on Hinchinbrook Island are usually in their dens by now. Sows with cubs are also usually the first to take refuge for the winter.
"But we're having such a balmy fall and winter," Crowley said. "There are still bears roaming around here and there."
"It is so warm it is astounding," added Cordova's Glasen. "It is an amazing thing. With these temperatures staying up, maybe these bears don't know" it's time to den.
The temperature in Cordova on Tuesday was pushing 50 degrees, more like September than November.
