24hourcampfire.com
24hourcampfire.com
Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Hop To
Joined: Nov 2007
Posts: 46,900
Campfire 'Bwana
OP Offline
Campfire 'Bwana
Joined: Nov 2007
Posts: 46,900
https://allthatsinteresting.com/ric...DvX5y2RjfnTsyYGul2gwnW9jgFGKV3SyllTeRIeA


An Isolated Miner In Alaska Just Survived A Week-Long Struggle With A Grizzly Bear Before The Coast Guard Saw His SOS
By Marco Margaritoff | Checked By Adam Farley
Published July 26, 2021
Richard Jessee was driving his ATV near his mining claim when the bear attacked him out of nowhere and destroyed his vehicle and cell phone. Then it kept coming back every night for a week.
Richard Jessee Bear Attack

U.S. Coast GuardThe remote mining camp was about 40 miles outside of Nome, Alaska.

The U.S. Coast Guard rescued an Alaskan miner after they spotted him waving his arms in the air and saw a distress sign written on his roof. He had been attacked by a grizzly bear, which had returned every night for a week straight before the man was saved.

Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Jared Carbajal had just changed course to avoid some clouds when he saw it: Isolated in the Alaskan wilderness was a man waving his arms. With “SOS” and “HELP ME” scrawled on the roof.

Injured and and sleep-deprived, the man was near death and had only two rounds left in his revolver.

“We don’t really come across people in the middle of nowhere,” said Lieutenant Junior Grade A.J. Hammac who copiloted the helicopter that day. “He was kind of struggling. When we came around, he was on his hands and knees waving a white flag. He definitely looked like he had been out there for a while.”

The man, identified as Richard Jessee, had been staying in the shack since July 12, when the bear attacked him, throwing him off his ATV and dragging him to a nearby river, where he lost his cell phone.

“The bear came out of nowhere,” he told The Nome Nugget. “It rolled my bike and the trailer over like it was a toy car. I was in shock and hypothermic.”

Jessee managed to fire a shot from his revolver to scare the bear away before running into his cabin for protection. But the bear continued to attack for days.

“There was no doubt about it: the bear was trying to get into my cabin,” he said. “I don’t know why it was so aggressive. Maybe it had cubs nearby.”
Nome Alaska

[bleep]/ZachNome, Alaska.

Some 40 miles outside of Nome, Jessee was stranded without his vehicle or a way to call for help. But he managed to write the SOS on top of his shack, and when he heard the helicopter, he began waving. When rescuers arrived, they noted the door had been ripped off. Jessee hadn’t slept in days.

“We were flying near a lot of old mining sites, and my copilot noticed a guy waving at us,” Carbajal said.

“He was waving two hands over his head, and that’s usually sign of distress, so we turned to fly over to check it out and make sure he was okay. As we came up, we noticed on top of his roof, he had painted ‘SOS HELP ME.'”

Perhaps most disturbing is that the rescue nearly didn’t happen at all. Carbajal and his crew had been ordered to travel from a remote base to Nome to fly a team of scientists along the coastline to look for dead whales and walruses the following day. To avoid bad weather, the 37-year-old pilot rerouted about a mile off course.

“If we would have been in the next river valley over, we would have totally missed him,” said Carbajal.

Bears proliferate the Alaskan wilderness, and bear attacks, while rare, are not uncommon. However, Alaskan Coast Guard spokeswoman Ali Blackburn explained that it’s very unusual for someone to have repeated encounters with the same bear.
Alaska Grizzly Bear

PixabayBetween 2000 and 2017, 68 people in Alaska were hospitalized in bear attacks — while 10 died.

Alaskan health officials detailed in a report from 2019 that 68 people in the state were hospitalized from bear attacks between 2000 and 2017. Ten people were killed during that time period.

The Coast Guard used this opportunity to remind anyone in the wild to carry a satellite phone or emergency beacon.

After the 15-minute flight from the camp to Nome, Jessee refused to be put on a stretcher and transported to a hospital. Instead, he demanded to walk himself to the nearby ambulance.

“You could tell he was starting to come off of the adrenaline, I think, and started to realize what happened,” said Carbajal. “He did not want to get in the gurney.”

Jessee is successfully recovering after being treated for a leg injury and bruises on his torso. He had been mining on his small claim every summer for the past 21 years without incident. But after this experience, he has decided to change his routine.

“The big lesson here is that I shouldn’t go out by myself,” he said. “I’ll never do that again. I’m a very lucky man.”


God bless Texas-----------------------
Old 300
I will remain what i am until the day I die- A HUNTER......Sitting Bull
Its not how you pick the booger..
but where you put it !!
Roger V Hunter
BP-B2

Joined: Dec 2003
Posts: 85,981
Campfire Oracle
Offline
Campfire Oracle
Joined: Dec 2003
Posts: 85,981
No. A real miner would have shot it.


If you take the time it takes, it takes less time.
--Pat Parelli

American by birth; Alaskan by choice.
--ironbender
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 31,969
L
las Offline
Campfire 'Bwana
Offline
Campfire 'Bwana
L
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 31,969
6 times, reload, and repeat. Then kick it.

NY Slimes article - June or July last year, with pics of the purpoted (sp?) mining camp. Guess it did happen. Maybe. This is the first I've heard of it, and no one was talking about it, then, here or elsewhere. Seems like it should have had some local Alaska exposure, no?

I googled the CG comander's name and it popped up.

Given, most of the stuff that happens out in the Bush or in the villages never makes the news, but a bear attack like that surely would, one would think. Maybe it did and I missed it - I don't do "news" much - and I was maybe fishing....

Last edited by las; 06/15/22.

The only true cost of having a dog is its death.

Joined: Jan 2019
Posts: 274
N
Campfire Member
Offline
Campfire Member
N
Joined: Jan 2019
Posts: 274
Iwonder if he is related to Jack Jessee, not a common spelling for his last name. I'll have to ask Jack next time I see him. I hadn't heard about this either.

Joined: Jan 2020
Posts: 5,134
T
Campfire Tracker
Offline
Campfire Tracker
T
Joined: Jan 2020
Posts: 5,134
Originally Posted by ironbender
No. A real miner would have shot it.
Definitely sounds like a biden voter.


Life is good live it while you can.
IC B2

Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 31,969
L
las Offline
Campfire 'Bwana
Offline
Campfire 'Bwana
L
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 31,969
Originally Posted by TrueGrit
Originally Posted by ironbender
No. A real miner would have shot it.
Definitely sounds like a biden voter.

And shooter.... couple rounds into the air fixes everything!

I wonder if the Nome Nugget even carried it?

Last edited by las; 06/17/22.

The only true cost of having a dog is its death.

Joined: Dec 2003
Posts: 85,981
Campfire Oracle
Offline
Campfire Oracle
Joined: Dec 2003
Posts: 85,981
I searched the victims name. The story was in the ADN, Guardian, Daily Mail, Sun, NPR, and others. Crazy but true!


If you take the time it takes, it takes less time.
--Pat Parelli

American by birth; Alaskan by choice.
--ironbender
Joined: Mar 2008
Posts: 100
J
Campfire Member
Offline
Campfire Member
J
Joined: Mar 2008
Posts: 100
I live here in Nome(I need to change my profile location). I hadn't heard this story, but something strikes me as odd: cell phone reception is non existent once you are a few miles from town. So, I don't understand why the loss of the cellphone figures into this story so prominently.

Maybe it was a satellite phone?

And the bear returns every night, but he doesn't shoot it??

Odd story all around

Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 57,377
R
Campfire Kahuna
Online Content
Campfire Kahuna
R
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 57,377
It would have been shot more than once on the spot. Not that I'd want to, but bear made the choice. Dang sure would have been shot if it returned and with a big rifle not a small pistol.


We can keep Larry Root and all his idiotic blabber and user names on here, but we can't get Ralph back..... Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over....

Moderated by  RickBin 

Link Copied to Clipboard
YB23

Who's Online Now
670 members (10gaugemag, 12344mag, 160user, 10gaugeman, 10Glocks, 12308300, 59 invisible), 3,151 guests, and 1,288 robots.
Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
Forum Statistics
Forums81
Topics1,187,742
Posts18,401,213
Members73,822
Most Online11,491
Jul 7th, 2023


 







Fish & Game Departments | Solunar Tables | Mission Statement | Privacy Policy | Contact Us | DMCA
Hunting | Fishing | Camping | Backpacking | Reloading | Campfire Forums | Gear Shop
Copyright © 2000-2024 24hourcampfire.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5
(Release build 20201027)
Responsive Width:

PHP: 7.3.33 Page Time: 0.093s Queries: 14 (0.003s) Memory: 0.8357 MB (Peak: 0.9241 MB) Data Comp: Zlib Server Time: 2024-03-29 13:52:43 UTC
Valid HTML 5 and Valid CSS