Montana Man Goes Full 'Revenant,' Survives 2 Bear Attacks in 1 Day

Todd Orr, wounded and bleeding, explained how he went full Leonardo DiCaprio in 'The Revenant' and survived not one, but two bear attacks in one day.

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Mother Nature can really be a bitch sometimes, as a Montana man found out when a bear attacked him twice in the same morning.

In a video on Facebook, Todd Orr, wounded and bleeding, explains how he went all Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant this weekend and survived not one, but two bear attacks in the same morning. 

Orr, a 50-year-old who was out scouting for hunting locations, explained the situation on Facebook. Knowing that bears were common in the area, Orr writes, he "hollered out 'hey bear' about every 30 seconds so as to not surprise any bears along the trail." But the bears apparently interpreted Orr's yelling as an invitation rather than a warning. ​

Orr saw a grizzly bear with her cubs—and they saw him too. After the bear and her cubs ran up the trail a bit, the mama bear suddenly "turned and charged straight my way." When the bear was about 25 feet away, Orr "gave her a full charge of bear spray" but the bear's "momentum carried her right through the orange mist and on me." 

At that point, Orr dropped his face in the dirt and and covered the back of his neck for protection while the bear was on top of him, repeatedly biting his arms, shoulders and backpack. Each bite, he wrote, "was like a sledge hammer with teeth." Finally, he writes, "after a couple minutes, but what seemed an eternity, she disappeared."

Stunned and hurt but still alive, he started walking the 3 miles back to his truck. At that time, he noticed "numerous bleeding puncture wounds on my arms and shoulder but I knew I would survive." 

But he wasn't even in the clear yet. 

About five or ten minutes down the trail from the first place the bear attacked him, Orr heard a sound and saw that his furry foe was back, having "either followed me back down the trail or cut through the trees and randomly came out on the trail right behind me," either way, that's not an ideal situation. 

The bear hopped on Orr yet again, causing him to wonder, "Why me?" He couldn't believe it was happening again, "I was so lucky the first attack, but now I questioned if I would survive the second."

Since he successfully survived the first attack, Orr again got as close as possible to the ground and protected the back of his neck with his arms as the bear bit him multiple times. One of the bites, Orr wrote, "went through to the bone and I heard a crunch."

If it wasn't already wild enough, that's when the situation gets really nuts:

"My hand instantly went numb and wrist and fingers were limp and unusable. The sudden pain made me flinch and gasp for breath. The sound triggered a frenzy of bites to my shoulder and upper back. I knew I couldn't move or make a sound again so I huddled motionless. Another couple bites to my head and a gash opened above my ear, nearly scalping me. The blood gushed over my face and into my eyes. I didn't move. I thought this was the end."

Suddenly—finally—the bear stopped and stood on top of Orr for about 30 seconds, and it was "dead silence except for the sound of her heavy breathing and sniffing." He expected the bear to go back to biting him again, but, instead, the bear finally left him alone. The local sheriff told the Montana Standard that the bear just simply lost interest in Orr because he was playing dead. "Then she just wandered off. Bears can be that way when they have their babies with them," he said.

He was able to make it the 2.5 miles or so back to his truck. Then he drove himself 17 miles to the hospital, where he spent eight hours with doctors "stitching to put me back together."

X-rays revealed "only a chip out of the ulna bone in my forearm," but most of his arm and shoulder were torn and punctured. He'll have a scar on his head as a result of a five-inch gash. The morning after, he also had "numerous deep bruises and scrapes" from bites that "didn't quite break the skin," along with bruises "in the shape of claws" along his back and butt from when the bear was chilling on top of him. (You can see some pictures of the damage on his Facebook.)

Basically, as he says in the video, "Life sucks in bear country."

That's a pretty bad day, but he is still alive, after all. Comparing the situation to "being struck by lightning twice in the same day," a local sheriff suggested that Orr "should go out and buy a lottery ticket now." (We think so too.)

"I couldn't believe I had survived two attacks," Orr wrote. "Double lucky!"

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