CHEHALIS — The outdoors have been Neil Rico’s playground since he was a little boy.
“Obviously, there’s an adrenaline rush when you hunt,” Rico told KOMO-TV. “That’s why I choose archery. It’s a lot more challenging.”
He could tell you plenty of stories about his adventures out in the wild over the years — but none will ever compare to his face-to-face encounter with a 500-pound grizzly bear near Livingston, Mont., on September 25.
“In all my years hunting as a kid, I’ve never had any kind of a close call,” Rico said. “I’ve never had any kind of a threat from any kind of animal before until this one time.”
Rico and a couple of friends were on a hunting trip up in the high country, Rico said.
They split off.
Rico hadn’t seen any signs of bears as he looked for a prize bull elk to bring home, he said.
All of a sudden, he could hear a bear charging toward him.
“I was looking up the hill for a clear path, so I could get onto those elk again. And that’s what I heard it was kind of a huffing from her breathing, I guess you’d say, coming from the timber,” Rico said. “I’ve never seen an animal move so fast in my life.”
Rico said he started to yell, but the bear kept on coming.
“About 6-7 feet away is when she finally did her lunge. Jumped up and that’s when I stuck this arm right here, more or less sacrificing this arm here to keep her off my throat, my neck, back of my head,” he said. “Once she bit onto my arm, she plowed over the top of me, drove me into the ground.”
“When she bit onto me, they have so much force when they bite that it was almost like somebody was chewing on a chicken bone. And you could hear every crunch,” he added.
For the next one to two minutes, Rico said the grizzly bear went back and forth between attacking his left arm and his ribs. It felt like she was shaking him like a rag doll, he added.
Every so often, she’d stop to check on her two cubs nearby, he said.
“I was lying on my back looking at her. I thought ‘For sure, this is it. I’m going to die right here. This bear is going to rip my guts out of here, and I’m going to lay here and watch.”‘ Rico said. “It felt like a lifetime. yeah, I didn’t think it was ever going to end until I either passed out or she got bored and full of me.”
Eventually, the bear decided to let Rico go after her cubs got about 40 yards away, he said.
“Didn’t even give, like I said, the courtesy look back. Just rolled off, walked off, and walked away as if nothing happened,” Rico said.
That gave him the break he needed to pull out his pistol, which he had tucked into his backpack before the encounter.
“That’s about what cost me my life was doing that. It’s a mistake that I’ll never make again,” Rico said. “After she got off of me, that’s when I pulled my pistol out of my pack. I cocked it back and had a choice: I could either shoot her and possibly wound her and have her come back to finish me off, or just let her go.”
Rico decided to let her go.
Somehow, he was able to roll over and call his friend on the phone for help.
“He’s like ‘We already know, man. We heard the whole thing go down.”‘
Rico said he made the mile-and-a-half walk down the mountain, where medics met him and took him to the hospital. Amazingly, he didn’t suffer any broken bones or internal injuries during the attack, he said. He was released from the hospital the next day.
“I appreciate life now more than I ever appreciated life,” Rico said. “Every day is a blessing.”
Rico said what he went through will definitely make him more cautious of where he hunts in the future. He already has a few trips planned.
He doesn’t have full-range of his left arm yet, but he is expected to eventually make a full recovery.
“I’ve been hunting my whole life. And no, this isn’t going to stop me. Not one bit,” Rico said. “Wasn’t really a religious man before this, but I definitely believe in a higher power. And somebody was definitely watching over me that day. I have a good idea who it was.”
