It’s going to take some time for Ryan Beierman’s scars to heal, but he’s alive and well today thanks to the quick thinking and good aim of his 12-year-old son Owen. The father and son were on a bear hunt in western Wisconsin earlier this month when Owen spotted a 200 pound black bear emerge in a clearing. Owen fired a shot and struck the bear, but it ran off into the thick brush. 

Ryan says he and his son waited about 20 minutes for the bear to bleed out before trying to track it. A couple of nearby neighbors lent a hand as well, along with the services of one of their tracking dogs. The elder Beierman says he and his son were trying to make their way through a thicket when the dog suddenly turned tail and ran away. Moments later, the Beierman’s spotted the injured bear… still alive and only a few feet away. 

I reached for my sidearm initially hoping to scare the bear away with a warning shot. He was only five or six feet away, point blank. As he charged, I shot to kill. I shot eight times but missed. I had no time and I never got the gun high enough to use the sights. 

Before I knew it I was flat on my back. I started pistol whipping him and it felt like I was striking a brick wall. I remember thinking: “You have to do something different.’’ I tried hitting him between the ear and mouth with a blunt edge of the pistol.

At that point, the bear released my leg, maybe reared back a little, and lunged at my head. All I could see were his claws and teeth. I lifted my right arm to block him. I remember the first bite. I heard a crunch. My thought was: “He broke my arm.” But it was punctured, not broken. The bear was still attacking. He wasn’t going to leave me.

Beierman says he continued to punch the bear as it was on top of him, but it was another shot from Owen’s rifle that allowed him to escape. 

The bullet transferred the bear’s weight to one side and I pushed him off. We heard the bear’s final moans and I can’t recall if we fired another round, or not. My head was spinning and our ordeal wasn’t quite over.

Owen had been incredibly composed and he helped me find my glasses. I can’t really see without them and they were under the bear. I was confused about our location so I pulled out my phone to look at my compass. My left cheek was sliced open and blood was oozing out of the flap. There were two fang marks in my forehead and my face was smattered with blood. My phone didn’t recognize my face so I punched in the code to open it.

Ryan Beierman ended up getting 23 stitches in his cheek, and was treated for multiple puncture wounds to his arms, legs, and face. While he says he’s not sure he’s going to be doing any more bear hunting in the future, he’s confident about one thing: “Owen is a hero”, he told the Associated Press.

While Beierman is rightfully proud of his son’s quick thinking, my guess is that dad’s parenting had something to do with Owen’s ability to respond under pressure instead of freezing up. Owen may be the hero of this story, but Ryan and his wife deserve some credit as well for raising such a brave and courageous kid who made the most important shot of his life when it counted.