Vern Evans
An Alaskan deer hunter was mauled and bitten on the head by a brown bear Sunday during a blacktail hunt on Admiralty Island. Amanda Compton, 44, walked away from the attack with a small piece of the bear’s tooth embedded in her skull.
Compton, who could not be reached for comment Friday, told the Anchorage Daily News that she and her hunting partner Nicholas Orr were hunting blacktail deer on the island, which lies 15 miles to the south of Juneau. Less than two hours into their hunt, around 11 a.m., they were walking through a boggy area with dense brush when a brown bear sow sow emerged from the bushes and charged Compton, who was in the lead.
Orr told ADN that the bear was on Compton in seconds. He said the experience was “like stepping on a landmine.” Neither hunter was able to grab their rifle, and Compton had just enough time to curl up into the fetal position and brace for impact.
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“I probably had two seconds to determine that the bushes were moving and something was coming at me, that it was a bear, and then to seek as much shelter as I could,” Compton told the news outlet. “Which was getting down in a ball and putting my hands and arms over my head and face.”
The attack was swift but brief, the hunters explained. The sow bit down on Compton’s head right away, then quickly let her go and ran off. When the bear turned back around from 15 yards away, Orr shot at it with his rifle and scared it off. He then noticed a cub in a nearby tree.
Compton said that although the pair had an inReach device with them, they decided not to use it. She was wearing a beanie at the time, so she couldn’t see the extent of the damage to her head, and she was still able to walk. So, they hiked back to their boat and ran back to Juneau, where she was treated at Bartlett Regional Hospital. Compton had a 6-inch laceration down the top of her skull and a 4-inch gash in the back of her head, along with a puncture wound on her left hand from where the bear had bitten down.
While stapling and stitching her wounds, doctors also found a 2-millimeter piece of bear tooth embedded in Compton’s skull, which she kept, according to ADN. She said she was amazed that the sow didn’t inflict more harm.
“It ripped me enough to say ‘I can do damage,’ but it didn’t cross the line into breaking a bone or anything,” Compton said. “It’s so rare to have a bear bite your head and be able to walk out of it and do math problems.”
A wildlife biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game visited Compton in the hospital to hear her story, and he chalked it up to a “surprise encounter.” He said that because the bear was defending its cub, ADFG would not try to locate it or take any other management action. The biologist also told ADN that Compton “did exactly what we’d tell somebody to do” in that situation.
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“If [a bear] feels threatened, the best thing you can do is act non-threateningly: get on the ground, cover yourself up,” he said.
As for Compton, she said the attack wouldn’t keep her from hunting on the island in the future. She said she’s had other brown bear encounters there before, which isn’t surprising. Admiralty Island is home to the highest concentration of brown bears in North America. There are an estimated 1,600 bears on the island, according to ADFG, which is higher than the human population and equals roughly one brown bear per square mile.
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