This Bears Jaws Were Locked On Its Victims Calf Muscle!

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Welcome back to Scary Bear Attacks! Today’s episode takes us to what seems like, to me, an unlikely location for a bear attack. When someone mentions New Mexico, you probably think of the arid deserts and Spanish architecture that characterize the majority of the state. The last thing I think of is giant black bears. Well, the last thing I think of is leopard seals, but black bears are right up there on the list. Just south of the good side of the Colorado border lies a small town called Raton. To the northwest of the town is a broad expanse of rolling wooded mountains packed with elk and deer. The pine, spruce and juniper stands cover the land like an emerald blanket and provide shade and shelter for predator and prey alike. There are cougars, gray wolves, coyotes, foxes and somewhere between five thousand and six thousand black bears.
On the morning of July twenty-fifth, twenty eighteen, local rancher Bridger Petrini was taking his bear hunting dogs out for a stroll. The fall bear season in New Mexico was a few weeks away, and he and his dogs were fine-tuning their skills a bit.
Bridger's father was a licensed professional guide in New Mexico. He started the business in 1985 and about eight years ago sold it to Bridger to keep it in the family. Since then, Bridger had been the driving force behind the success of his family's guide service and later on in the day, he had some business in town to tend to.
Bridger led his dogs away from their home, down a rural road meandering through the junipers. There were many animals near his home, and it wasn’t rare to see them, or have his dogs react to them. He lived in this home with his wife, Janelle, and their four children. The kids experienced an embrace of nature many children never feel.
As his dogs sniffed and explored, they came across a familiar scent along the road. Their ears perked up, and they suddenly bolted from the roadside and into the tree, baying as they went. Bridger knew this was the behavior they exhibited when they were on a bear scent trail, and was immediately alarmed at what he knew was to come.
When hunting bears with hounds, the dogs are typically bound in kennels to keep them from obeying their training and breed instincts. They are bred to immediately and continuously pursue a bear until it is treed, or cornered so that humans can either kill it, or pull them off of the scent trail and back to their kennels. Without direct control over the dogs, this action was unstoppable until the chase culminated in the bear being treed or cornered.
Hearing the commotion from the house, Bridger's ten-year-old son, whom we will call Daniel, yelled out to his father. He asked if he could help his dad round up the dogs and received an affirming reply, as well as instructions to bring the Kawasaki Mule for the pair to ride on as they followed the baying hounds. In just a few moments, Daniel showed up as his father directed him to.
Bridger had brought his cell phone along but wasn’t packing a firearm, nor bear spray. Janelle called him and asked him to come back and pick up his sister so that she could see a bear for the first time. Bridger knew this situation was not ideal, and told Janelle that the dogs had to be pulled off the bear's scent trail immediately in order to avoid injury to any animals involved. Daniel and his father putted along on the Mule to finish rounding up their hounds.
Janelle and Bridgers sister hopped into the family vehicle, a Toyota Tacoma, and began following the pursuit as best they could from the road. Janelle packed the three kids and Bridger's sister in the truck and departed the home, knowing that they may be able to see the bear at some point, and would be able to reach Bridger and Daniel on the cell phone as they searched.
Given the altitude of 6500 feet and the moderate temperatures on the day, the bear and the dogs were soon tiring. It was in the upper eighties, and that is fairly warm for this high up, so the conditions took their toll on the critters quickly. When a bear is pursued by hounds, it will try to run away, or find a tree to climb. In the event it cannot find an escape in either of those ways, it will eventually turn around and stand its ground to fight its pursuers. This is exactly what happened beneath a rocky outcropping. Bridger could tell by the way the dogs bayed that the bear was not moving anymore, and knew that this may be a good chance to gather his hounds, so he and Daniel hurried to the location as quickly as the Mule would carry them.
As Bridger and Daniel approached the standoff, Bridger instructed Janelle and the occupants of the truck to park a ways away as he pulled the hounds off. He had pulled hounds off of scent trails and cornered animals many times before, and didn’t expect this time to be any different.