By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
Thanks to the quick reactions of his companions, a local man survived a bear attack near Ford Arm on Chichagof Island last Thursday.
Jess Coltharp, 31, a lifelong Sitkan and longtime Department of Fish and Game stream surveyor, suffered a serious wound when the brown bear seized his leg in its teeth and shook him.
Despite his injury, Coltharp told the Sentinel, he’s recovering well following surgery in Anchorage.
“Feeling good, not too sore. Really just trying to relax and take my time,” Coltharp said of his recovery. “I don’t know – it’s been a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.”
Jess Coltharp waits for transport to Sitka and gives the thumbs-up after being mauled by a bear last week on West Chichagof Island. A Dept. of Fish and Game co-worker, Anthony Walloch, shot the bear as it chomped on Coltharp’s leg. (Photos provided by Jess Coltharp)
At the time of the attack Coltharp was counting salmon in a backcountry stream in the West Chichagof Wilderness, accompanied by co-worker Anthony Walloch and a volunteer, Ethan Christianson.
Coltharp, who has worked as a Fish and Game stream surveyor since graduating from high school, was in dense brush less than a mile inland from Ford Arm when a brown bear charged him from close range.
“It was a pretty normal creek walk and we saw bears throughout the stream,” Coltharp said. “We always do, there’s always multiple bears all the time. So it was a pretty ordinary creek walk, just chit-chatting... and I heard some bushes break and about 20 feet away there’s a big old brown bear barreling out of the woods at me.”
The attack was so quick that Coltharp didn’t have a chance to use the gun slung over his shoulder.
He said details of the attack are clear in his memory.
“It’s very vivid,” he said. “I remember the whole thing really well, because I remember as it was charging me, I was trying to get the gun around and ready. And there was a point – the bear must have been within 10 feet, best guess 5 plus feet away, just within striking distance – I had the thought, ‘OK, I’m not going to be able to shoot this thing, but I know somebody else will. So I’ve got to try not to take too much damage in the process.’”
He dove to the ground, but the bear chomped down on his leg nonetheless.
“I made the choice to dive backwards and to the left to try to get out of the bear’s way,” he said, “and when I did that, the bear came down and chomped me on the leg just above the knee and grabbed me in its jaws and started shaking me around... similar to how a dog kind of throws a toy around or kind of plays tug of war, where it was just jerking my body side to side.”
He said that amid the rush of teeth and fur he still had confidence that Walloch would be able to shoot the bear.
“I didn’t feel like I was about to die as much as I felt I was about to get chewed up, because I knew my deckhand is very adequately trained and I had a lot of confidence he was going to kill that bear very quickly. I just needed to preserve myself in the meantime... It was definitely frightening, but it was almost more intense than terrifying just because – I’m not sure how to put it, I guess – more like a race against a very short clock,” he said.
As the bear tore into his left leg just above the knee, Coltharp shouted for his partner to fire on the animal.
“As the bear had me and was kind of thrashing me around I definitely remember yelling, ‘Shoot it! Shoot it! Shoot it! Shoot it!’ and then I remember hearing the gunshot, and the very first thought that went through my brain was I was waiting for a painful sensation of potentially a bullet, because I wasn’t sure what kind of shot they had ... part of me wondered if I was about to get hit,” Coltharp remembered.
Walloch fatally struck the bear with a Brenneke slug fired from his 12 gauge Remington 870 shotgun. Two more slugs ensured that the animal did not get back up.
“The bear instantly released me and pretty much was instantly dead,” Coltharp said. “My deckhand also shot the bear I believe two more times immediately after the first shot, just to be safe.”
With the bear dead, first aid and evacuation became the next priority, he said.
“We had an inReach (satellite messaging device) that we carried that’s provided from work that has our GPS location on it, as well as the ability to send text messages back to town,” Coltharp said. “We sent a message out alerting our boss what had happened and then right after that we decided to address the wound. Adrenaline was crazy.”
After bandaging his injury, Coltharp said, the group hiked downstream toward Ford Arm, but near the beach the stream was difficult to cross and he couldn’t make it on his own.
“The lower section on that river was quite treacherous, very slick, sharp rocks and also very high water in the creek. The river was much higher than normal. I told them ‘I don’t think I can navigate this in my current state,’” he said.
Ethan Christianson, the volunteer with the group, headed downstream on his own to retrieve the group’s small raft, Coltharp said.
“Ethan definitely did his part going down and grabbing that raft. I was really proud of all three of us because we did what needed to get done... I’m pretty impressed with us,” he said.
Once equipped with a boat, the trio paddled to the beach.
Not long after the party reached the beach, a float plane sent by Fish and Game picked up Coltharp and flew him to Sitka, where he received emergency medical care at SEARHC. For further surgery, he was flown to Anchorage, where he’s now recovering.
“The main damage that ended up happening was a section of my quad muscle, my lower inner thigh, where one of your strains of quad muscle comes down. That was severed, that was the main thing that had to get reattached,” he said, “as well as a lot of cleaning out tissue and making sure there wasn’t an infection, because animal bites can be pretty gnarly.”
While the specifics are uncertain, Coltharp is confident he’ll recover.
“It’s still a bit foggy,” he said. “They’re definitely hoping, so there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to get back at least a huge portion of where I was originally. I believe with rehab and everything, that’s totally achievable.”
Undeterred by the bear attack, Coltharp hopes to return to his backcountry job.
“Absolutely! I’ve been doing the job, this is my 14th year... If one out of every thousand bears is the one that gets you, I guess I’ve got 999 more bears to go before I have to worry about it. I don’t really think this incident really speaks to how dangerous bears are, or how often they attack people. It’s an isolated incident with a very specific situation,” he said.
In hindsight, Coltharp thinks that the attack demonstrates the value of a trustworthy team of well-trained people in the backcountry.
“If there is something to take away from this, it’s that it’s good to have someone that you trust with you, and training is valuable whether it was trauma care of firearms and, you know, bear defense safety training, a number of different things,” Coltharp said. “It’s extremely valuable especially when you’re in a dangerous environment.”
