By Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver Sun


Rory Chapple was hunting for elk near the Kechika River in northern B.C. when he says he came face-to-face with a grizzly.
Photograph by: Handout, Vancouver Sun

An arrow intended for an elk instead saved a veteran bow hunter’s life when a grizzly attacked him last week in northern B.C.

Rory Chapple, an autobody worker from Fort. St. John, was on an annual elk hunting trip with four buddies near the remote Kechika River when he left camp in search of elk at about 6:30 a.m. on Sept. 8.

He was alone because his buddies didn’t want to hunt in the rain. Armed with his bow and quiver, he was ambling up a hill when he heard something huffing behind him.

Turning around, he found himself face-to-face with a growling grizzly sow and three yearling cubs.

“I’d walked about 100 yards before she came out of the bush and charged me,” Chapple, 39, said. “I couldn’t outrun her and I had nowhere to hide. It was a losing battle so all I could do was holler and scream at her.”

As she charged toward him, the screaming Chapple began backing up but his heel hooked on a root and he tripped.

The bear lunged and Chapple grabbed the only tool he had — an arrow from his quiver — and stuck it in her throat. He didn’t have time to load the bow.

“My first reaction was to save my ass. It’s ‘what can I do to survive this.’” Chapple said. “She landed on top of me, pushed my head into the ground and stepped on my right leg, ripping my pants.”

As the bear turned away, the arrow pushed deeper into her throat but she eventually managed to dislodge it and fled with her cubs into the willows.

That’s when the shock hit, Chapple said, and he was “hunched over like a bowl of jelly” when his buddies found him.

“I was close enough to camp so they could hear me screaming,” he said. “You realize it’s a matter of life and death here and all I had to defend myself was a bow and arrow.

“It could have definitely been worse.”

The hunters searched for the bear but there was no sign of her or her cubs in the area.

Chapple, a father of two girls, said this is the first time in seven years that he has seen a bear near the Kechika River, which is in a remote part of B.C.

To get to the camp, he and his buddies drove for eight hours up the Alaska Highway and then took a boat for another 3.5 hours on the river. The group returned home two days later, with Chapple relatively unscathed.

Chapple, who is president of the Fort St. John archery club, said he plans to return to the Kechika River next year and has already bought a can of bear spray.

The arrow that saved him, he said, will be kept safe in a glass case.

Source: http://www.timescolonist.com/technology/hunter+uses+arrow+fight+grizzly/2001599/story.html