Family members say Lou Downard, 78, was a bit tired Saturday, and his bandages needed to be changed every few hours, but otherwise he was in good spirits just 24 hours after being attacked by a black bear while on a river rafting trip in southeastern Utah with his family.
Downard was with eight other family members and four guides on a river rafting trip on the Green River through Desolation Canyon in Carbon County. On Thursday, the group found a spot near Rock Creek Ranch to stop for the night.
Between 6 and 6:30 p.m., a bear wandered into the camp area. The group was able to scare it away by firing a rifle into the air.
But just after midnight Friday morning, the bear returned. This time, it went after Downard, who was sleeping on a cot.
"It came along, and I was laying on my right side, and it got me there," Lou told KSL TV. "(I) yelped, 'Help! The bear's got me!' "
"It all happened so fast," Manual Downard told the Deseret News. "We chased the bear away once — hoped it was gone. (We) wanted it to stay gone. I guess it had other plans."
Other family members quickly came to Downard's aid, including his daughter, Becky Harvey. She jumped on the bear and hit it with her fists. After the bear let go of Downard, his 26-year-old grandson, Riley Downard, shot the animal in the back. It was able to run away from the campsite but was found dead the next day.
"My boy jumped in his tent, got ahold of the gun," Manual Downard said. "We weren't even going to take the gun, then we decided we'd better. Just a feeling, just precautionary."
Lou Downard was flown by medical helicopter out of the remote area about 4 a.m. The rest of his family was flown out later that morning.
Downard's torso was punctured and his arms heavily scratched, according to the DWR.
By Saturday afternoon, Downard was out of the hospital and resting at his daughter's house. Now that the adrenaline had drained out of his system, his family said he mostly just needed to rest.
"It was a tremendous thing that happened," Harvey said. "We'd like to get him well and back to normal. He's doing OK. We're keeping his bandages clean."
"I think I came out of it pretty damn lucky," Lou Downard told KSL TV.
The bear's carcass was recovered Friday afternoon and taken to a lab where it will be checked for disease on Monday.
"It was an adult bear, a fairly large bear," said Division of Wildlife Resources Southeastern Region Wildlife Biologist Brad Crompton who estimated the bear weighed between 250 and 350 pounds.
Ironically, the DWR received a report Thursday afternoon, just about the same time as the Downards were encountering the bear for the first time, about a bear in that area that had approached another group of river rafters the previous Saturday and attacked a dog, Crompton said.
Because the area is so remote, a river guide wasn't able to relay the information to a BLM ranger until several days later. The ranger, in turn, called the DWR, he said.
DWR officials were already making plans to go to the area to check out the bear sighting when they received word of the Downard incident.
The area where the bear was killed takes approximately four days to raft or hike to, Crompton said. The Department of Public Safety's helicopter was used to carry the bear's carcass out of the region.
Officials from the DWR said the family did everything right in this situation — they had properly stored their food away from their sleeping area. The incident was the latest in a string of bear encounters this summer that resulted in the animal being killed. Information on bear safety can be found at www.wildlife.utah.gov/bearsafety.
e-mail: preavy@desnews.com