CUYAMACA, Calif — A 67-year-old La Jolla man died from a rattlesnake bite he suffered while wading through an East Country stream as part of a trout study near Cuyamaca Reservoir, it was reported Saturday.

William “Skip” Price, reportedly an avid fly fisherman, was wearing water sandals when he was bitten on one foot by the rattler along Boulder Creek Wednesday, Gary Strawn of Santee, one of five people with Price, told The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Strawn said Price stopped breathing within minutes, and he and others performed CPR for about 20 minutes until paramedics arrived.

A sheriff’s helicopter took Price to Palomar Medical Center in Escondido, where he was declared dead about 1 p.m., according to the county Medical Examiner’s Office.

Strawn, conservation chairman of San Diego Fly Fishers, said he met Price that morning when they and four other fly-fishing volunteers carpooled out Boulder Creek Road, in the Pine Hills area northeast of Cuyamaca Reservoir, to take part in a study of native steelhead trout.

Price was bitten within minutes of starting the survey as he stepped over logs and boulders along the streambed, Strawn said.

Strawn said he never saw the snake, “but it must have been a big one. The bite marks on top of his foot were an inch and a half across.”

via La Jolla Man Dies From Rattlesnake Bite In East County – San Diego News Story – KGTV San Diego.

Wyoming Game & Fish and U.S. Fish & Wildlife officials are investigating the report of a bear-caused human injury west of Cody.

The report indicated that a hunter was injured early Thursday afternoon by a grizzly bear while hunting near Jim Mountain. The hunter received injuries to his right arm.

Initial information indicates the bear was shot and killed by the hunter after the attack occurred. The hunter was hunting with a partner, who was not in the immediate vicinity of the encounter.

After walking out three miles to the trailhead and driving himself to Cody, the hunter was admitted to West Park Hospital and remained in the hospital overnight for observation.

via Cody Enterprise: Home – Man allegedly kills griz after attack.

Wyoming Game & Fish and U.S. Fish & Wildlife officials are investigating the report of a bear-caused human injury west of Cody.

The report indicated that a hunter was injured early Thursday afternoon by a grizzly bear while hunting near Jim Mountain. The hunter received injuries to his right arm.

Initial information indicates the bear was shot and killed by the hunter after the attack occurred. The hunter was hunting with a partner, who was not in the immediate vicinity of the encounter.

After walking out three miles to the trailhead and driving himself to Cody, the hunter was admitted to West Park Hospital and remained in the hospital overnight for observation.

via Cody Enterprise: Home – Man allegedly kills griz after attack.

Orion Township — An Orion Township man bitten by an eastern massasauga rattlesnake, Michigan’s only venomous snake, is recovering after being treated with anti-venom at a local hospital and released Friday evening.

The unidentified man was walking with his beagle in the woods behind his home around 6:45 p.m. when he was bitten, according to Sgt. Mark Buffa of the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office.

Beaumont Hospital spokeswoman Karen LeDuc said the man was brought in shortly after the bite.

“He was treated by an anti-venom we received from the Detroit Zoo, and released,” she said.

Buffa said the man’s dog was bit first. When he “came up to investigate, he got bit,” Buffa said.

The dog’s condition was unclear late Friday.

The eastern massasauga rattlesnake is found in a variety of wetlands and woods throughout the lower peninsula.

It is the only Michigan snake with segmented rattles on the end of its tail and elliptical (“cat like”) vertical pupils in the eyes. The neck is narrow, contrasting with the wide head and body, and the head appears triangular in shape. It usually feeds on small rodents and frogs, and adults can grow to 2

to 3

feet long.

Friday’s incident marks the third snake bite involving an eastern massasauga rattlesnake in a month.

A dog was bitten by one in late September and also treated with anti-venom from the Detroit Zoo.

via Man recovering after rattlesnake bite | detnews.com | The Detroit News.

DELAWARE, Ohio — The actions of a neighbor may have saved the life of a 67-year-old man who was attacked and mauled on Tuesday by a group of dogs.

Family members said James Bright was walking to his aunt’s house, as he does each day, when four Cane Corsos began attacking him.

Louis Clegg said he came upon the scene and saw the dogs tearing away at Bright, 10TV’s Kevin Landers reported.

“(His) pants were tore apart, legs chewed up (and) the back of his head was mangled,” Clegg said.

Clegg said he jumped in his car and used the vehicle to scare the dogs away.

“I was a foot away from the man,” he said.  “I backed up, honked the horn and charged to scare them off.”

It was enough to stop the dogs from mauling Bright.  The owner of the dogs appeared a short time later and corralled the animals, Landers reported.

The owner, Virgil Mitchell III, has not been charged in connection with Tuesday’s attack, but court records showed he had been cited eight times from 2002 to 2008 for violations that included allowing his dogs to run at large and failing to immunize them for rabies, Landers reported.

Mitchell could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.

The dogs were being held at the Delaware County Animal Shelter.

Each of the dogs involved in the attack was being kept in a separate cage, 10TV’s Shayla Reaves reported.

The county’s assistant dog warden could not comment on the case, but police said animal control officers were finishing paperwork in connection with the attack.

Charges were filed against the dog’s owner on Wednesday afternoon,  Reaves reported.

Bright, who was airlifted by helicopter to Grant Medical Center in Columbus after the attack, was expected to survive his wounds. He was recovering from skin grafting surgery Reaves reported.

Bright’s son told 10TV News that he spoke with his father, and his father expressed relief that it was him and not a child that was attacked.

“When I talked to my dad that’s the first thing he said, ‘Thank God it wasn’t a kid,’” said John Bright.

via Delaware Man Uses Car To Stop Dog Attack | WBNS-10TV, Central Ohio News.

John Chelminiak, 57, a city council employee in Bellevue, Washington, was mauled by the black bear at the end of the driveway to his holiday home in Lake Wenatchee, Washington.

He had been out walking his dogs when the bear struck.

His wife Lynn Semler called 911 and said: “My husband has been attacked by a bear. He’s at the bottom of the driveway.”

In the background Mr Chelminiak could be heard saying he was dying.

He suffered wounds to the upper part of his body, and underwent surgery in Seattle where he is recovering.

His wife, who ran to help him, said: “I thought at first it was a black dog, and then just a couple strides down I realised it was a bear and John had been yelling bear, bear.”

The female black bear, thought to be about 10-years-old and without cubs, was killed a few hours after the attack.

via Man cried ‘I’m dying’ during black bear attack – Telegraph.

COLUMBIA STATION, Ohio — The Cuyahoga County coroner’s office determined that a Lorain County man killed in a bear attack died of multiple wounds.

Spokesman Powell Caesar said today there were no surprises in the autopsy of Brent Kandra.

He said the man suffered numerous sharp wounds and blunt injuries, “what would be expected in a bear attack.”

The black bear that mauled Kandra has been euthanized.

Sam Mazzola, the owner of the bear, had said he would leave the bear’s fate up to the Kandra family; they opted to have the animal killed.

Brent Kandra, 24, had played and worked with Mazzola’s animals about six years.

One of Mazzola’s nine bears attacked Kandra Thursday evening when Kandra was feeding it.

Black bears are considered indigenous to Ohio, but there are nearly as many of them in private ownership as in the wild. State officials Friday said there are 24 black bears registered to private owners in Northeast Ohio — nine of them belonging to Mazzola — and 20 more in other regions of the state.

State officials estimate Ohio’s wild black bear population numbers between 60 and 80. Most live in the southeastern part of the state where it’s less populated and more forested.

via Man killed by bear suffered multiple wounds | cleveland.com.

COOS BAY — An Oregon man says a great white shark knocked him off his surfboard near Winchester Bay.

David Lowden told “The World” newspaper in Coos Bay that he was paddling his board last week near the south jetty of the Umpqua River when a shark he estimated at nearly 14 feet broke the surface behind him.

“As I’m flying off the board, I got a good look at the shape of the shark,” said Lowden, who was not injured in the encounter.

The shark emerged halfway from the water and broke the fins off his surfboard.

“That probably scared it a bit. It thrashed around a bit … and after that it disappeared,” he said.

Lowden, 29, and another man surfed to the beach while a third surfer, Lowden’s friend, Mark Lorincz, of North Bend, clambered onto the jetty and ditched his board.

Lowden phoned the U.S. Coast Guard to report the encounter, then contacted the Shark Research Committee, a private group that tracks shark attack data.

A release from that organization characterized it as an “unprovoked shark attack.” It was the only recorded attack this year in Oregon, and the fifth along the Pacific Coast.

Alan Shanks, a professor at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology in Charleston, said the encounter described by Lowden is typical shark behavior.

Shanks said great white sharks often attack from below to stun seals, sea lions and other large prey.

“These guys are primarily big-thing eaters,” Shanks said. “A surfboard from below has a silhouette not unlike a marine mammal.”

Lowden said local surfers frequently see sharks. He has spotted six sharks while surfing on the Oregon coast, including one that bumped his board in 2006.

“I wasn’t that surprised, to tell you the truth,” Lowden said. “It’s not the first time I’ve had an encounter.”

via Oregon man reports encounter with great white shark | statesmanjournal.com | Statesman Journal.

(CBS)  An Arctic explorer survived a polar bear attack.

Sebastian Nilssen, of Norway, says he woke up with his head in the bear’s mouth last week.

Ht told the website Asylum.com, “I grabbed for my shotgun and tried to shoot it but the polar bear had snapped the gun in half. It must have been only a minute I was in his jaws, but it felt like forever.”

As the bear stood up with him in its mouth, a friend shot the bear dead.

Nilssen says he’s not angry at the bear — because it was probably very hungry.

Asylum says, “Nilssen was airlifted to the hospital and underwent three hours of emergency surgery to repair a pierced lung and stem the flow of blood from bite marks on his neck, which were inches from a vital artery. ”

via Man Wakes Up with Head in Polar Bear’s Mouth – The Early Show – CBS News.

Ever since Jaws, great whites have had a reputation as killing machines that has never seemed much point questioning.

However, that could all be about to change – after a study into the fearsome predators’ dining habits.

Scientists towed a 36ft Brydes whale carcass into a well-known hunting ground for the animals in an exercise aimed at documenting how they tackled the huge free lunch.

And these amazing pictures show how up to 30 of them stripped a single whale carcass – and gave an ‘extraordinary’ insight into how the much-feared predators behave.

But while many would have expected a feeding frenzy and potentially lethal fights between the razor-teethed gians, the behaviour observed was quite different.

The sharks appeared to select choice cuts of the dead whale and did not appear to be aggressive towards each other.

Free lunch: The 30 great white sharks were provided with a whale carcass so scientists could study their eating habits

Tasty findings: Alison Kock was the principal scientist at Save Our Seas Shark Centre and Shark Spotting Programme, at Cape Town in South Africa and was surprised by the sharks

Alison Kock, 33, the principal scientist at Save Our Seas Shark Centre and Shark Spotting Programme, at Cape Town South Africa, said: ‘Contrary to their reputation as mindless killers, the level of selectivity for which parts of the dead whale they ate was extraordinary.

‘They targeted the energy-rich blubber, often making repeated “test bites” where no flesh was removed, and removing flesh only once they had determined it was what they wanted. If they got a mouthful of muscle, they often spat it out.

‘They were very picky.’

It’s thought the huge whale was killed after being struck by a boat and was found floating towards Miller’s Point near Cape Town, South Africa, where the clean up operation for the local authorities would have been difficult as their huge bodies are harder to remove on land.

It was also feared the body – giving off oils that attract predators like sharks – may have drawn in great whites to an area frequented by swimmers.

Kock added: ‘Permission was granted by the authorities to have the dead whale towed to nearby Seal Island where the carcass was less of an issue and the sharks could help solve the clean-up problem.

‘In addition it provided an unparalleled opportunity to document white shark behaviour and record the number of sharks in the area.

‘Whale carcasses are believed to be a very important source of food for white sharks with some scientific evidence suggesting they follow whale migrations possibly to, opportunistically feed on dead or sick whales.’

Jaws: Alison Koch said: ‘Contrary to their reputation as mindless killers, the level of selectivity for which parts of the dead whale they ate was extraordinary’

Blubber: During the nine-day experiment Kock and her team made some shocking discoveries, including the fact that the sharks seemed to have a huge preference for soft blubber over tough muscle

During the nine-day experiment, which ended on Saturday, Kock and her team made some shocking discoveries, including the fact that the sharks seemed to have a huge preference for soft blubber over tough muscle.

‘In the case of the whale carcass the sharks knew exactly what they wanted,’ said Kock.

‘It provides evidence that when they bite into a surfboard, or kayak or person wearing a wetsuit they can immediately determine it’s not something they want to eat.

‘It’s very common in attacks on humans for white sharks to take a single bite and leave it at that. Our study provides more evidence that they are simply tasting and looking for meat that is nutritious. It shows that they are not just swimming around mindlessly eating everything they come across, as they are sometimes portrayed.’

She added: ‘I was surprised at the total number of white sharks that fed on the dead whale over the nine days we documented the event. We recorded over 30 different sharks in total. At one stage we had up to four white sharks feeding simultaneously on the carcass.

‘The first two days were the busiest with the most sharks, and the activity slowly decreased as the sharks had their fill. The last two days we recorded no sharks feeding on the carcass.

‘Many of the sharks I recognised as individuals hunting seals around the island from this shark season, as well as previous years. We used their unique dorsal fins to identify them, but there were also new sharks that I had never seen before.

‘The sharks showed very little aggression towards one another in the presence of such a large food source, often feeding side by side.

‘Some of the sharks we observed were gorging on the blubber and you could actually see their bellies getting fuller.

“Some would arrive quite skinny and by the end of their session they looked pregnant with their bellies bulging.’

During the study, the sharks reduced the carcass down to less than seven feet (two metres) of bone and muscle, having removed all the blubber.

Shark enthusiast Kock, added: ‘This is the ultimate example of the very important role sharks play in the ecosystem. That of recycling life, and of keeping our oceans healthy by removing dead and decaying animals like dead whales.’

via Shark attack: Incredible pictures of 30 great whites stripping a whale carcass provide ‘extraordinary’ insight into eating habits | Mail Online.