Two university wrestlers were injured after being attacked by a grizzly bear at Shoshone National Forest, located to the south-east of Yellowstone National Park in the US state of Wyoming.
Kendell Cummings and Brady Lowry surprised the bear while they were out searching for antlers, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department said.
The men credited their bond as teammates with helping them survive the attack, which took place on Saturday. Mr Lowry suffered a broken arm and puncture wounds.
“It shook me around and I didn’t know what to do,” Mr Lowry told KSL-TV in an interview on Monday from a hospital in Billings, Montana.
“I curled up in a ball and it got me a few more times.”
Mr Cummings suffered an even more brutal attack as he tried to wrestle the bear off his friend.
“I didn’t want to lose my friend. It was bad,” Mr Cummings told Deseret News.
“There was a big, old bear on top of him. I could have run and potentially lost a friend, or get him off and save him.
“It tackled me, chewed me up a bit, and then when it was done, it wandered off, and I started calling out for Brady to make sure he was all right.”
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But the bear was gone only briefly before attacking Mr Cummings again.
“The bear circled back around and it got me again, chewed on me, and that’s when it got my head and cheek,” he said.
“And then it went away again, for whatever reason.”
Mr Cummings then looked for his other teammates while Mr Lowry looked for an area with mobile phone service to call 911.
Two of their wrestling teammates helped Mr Cummings off the mountain. Both he and Mr Lowry were admitted to Billings Hospital, where Mr Cummings underwent surgery.
Neither man was listed as a patient there on Tuesday, a hospital representative said.
Wyoming wildlife officials said they would not try to capture, relocate or kill the bear because it was a surprise attack and because the densely populated bear area makes it difficult to determine which bear attacked the students.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report
