Hero boy, 12, shoots dead 200-pound bear mauling his dad
A 12-year-old boy saved his father from a 200-pound black bear that was on top of him biting relentlessly.
Owen Beierman bravely shot and killed the bear as it pinned his dad, Ryan Beierman, 43, to the ground in the woods close to their Wisconsin cabin.
Ryan had picked his son up from school to go on a bear hunt, which was not his first. Owen spotted a bear approaching a bait station and fired a 350 Legend hunting rifle. The shot ‘hit the bear, but missed the ideal kill zone’, Ryan told The Minneapolis Star Tribune.
The bear sprinted off and as darkness fell, the father and son used a neighbor’s tracking dog to search for the animal.
They finally spotted the wounded bear five to six feet away and it charged at Ryan, who fired eight shots but all missed.
‘Before I knew it I was flat on my back. I started pistol whipping him and it felt like I was striking a brick wall,’ the dad told the newspaper of the September 6 encounter.
‘All I could see were his claws and teeth. I lifted my right arm to block him. I remember the first bite. I heard a crunch. My thought was: “He broke my arm.” But it was punctured, not broken.’
Ryan realized the bear was not going to leave him and continued fighting for his life.
‘I’m punching and kicking and flailing around. That’s when I saw a flash from the muzzle of Owen’s rifle,’ the father said.
‘The bullet transferred the bear’s weight to one side and I pushed him off. We heard the bear’s final moans and I can’t recall if we fired another round, or not.’
Ryan’s ‘incredibly composed’ son helped him find his glasses under the bear carcass and the father called for help and realized his left cheek was sliced and that he had bites on his head.
At a hospital, Ryan received 23 stitches on his cheek and more on puncture wounds on his arm. He told his wife he is ‘done bear hunting’.
He credited his son as the reason he cheated death.
Owen was ‘pretty shaken’ afterward, Ryan said.
‘I was proud of Owen,’ the dad said. ‘He really held it together.’
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