Early Thursday morning, archery hunter Landon Clement was backed up against a rock in the remote Upper Green River Basin, hoping and praying that the three grizzly bears that were 10 yards away would just walk away.
It was the most intense, terrifying moment he’s experienced in his 31 years, he told Cowboy State Daily.
The bears, a female with two large cubs, had come downhill on his left and turned to cross in front of him.
Although he already had his Glock 10mm semiautomatic drawn and leveled at the bears, all he wanted was for things to end peacefully.
“But that’s not what happened,” he said.
Instead, the mother grizzly charged Clement and sank her teeth into his left thigh, and he ended up shooting the bear to death.
“She lunged right at me,” he said. “I saw nothing but her head and her white teeth coming right at me.”
He described the attack was incredibly fast and violent, as the bear locked her jaws down on his leg and started shaking her head.
He was too pumped full of adrenaline to feel any pain, he said. That came later.
What struck him in that awful moment was the sheer force of the grizzly’s jaws.
“I did not feel the pain in the moment,” he said. “I could feel the force that it put on me. It felt like a freight train. I’ve never felt that much force in my life. It’s unbelievable that something could do that to me, and how fast it happened.”
Clement’s ordeal was the third time this hunting season that grizzlies in the region have attacked archery hunters, and the hunters used handguns to kill the bears in self-defense. The two previous incidents were in Idaho and Montana.
Clement said he considers himself lucky.
He suffered four deep puncture wounds to his thigh. Doctors at the Pinedale Clinic “stitched me up really good,” said Clement, who is from Blue Ridge, Georgia, but frequently hunts in the Upper Green River Basin near Pinedale.
They told him that he hadn’t suffered any permanent damage and should recover fully.
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The four of them rode to a remote spot in a side-by-side, and then started hiking. Before long they split up. Clement’s father and cousin decided to keep going farther back in to do some scouting.
Quintrell and Clement selected good spots to set up and wait for elk to come within bow range. The two hunters were about 300 yards apart, with Quintrell downhill from Clement.
Clement found what he thought was the perfect spot, a large boulder with some deadfall timber leaning against it.
Then the bears came into full view.
“I knew right away it was grizzlies,” he said. I could see the shapes of their heads, the shoulder humps, everything.”
At first, it looked as if the bears would just keep going downslope, passing him by and leaving him with nothing but a great story to tell.
Then the grizzlies turned, taking a path that would put them right in front of him.
“When those bears cut down that trail and veered toward me, I knew I was probably going to have an issue,” Clement said.
So he drew his pistol.
“I was still backed up against the rock,” he said. “And when I realized that they were coming my way, I just backed up even further against that rock, I was practically glued to it.”
As the bears came up in front of him, his only hope was that they wouldn’t notice him and would keep going.
But they caught his scent.
“They stopped on a dime. All three of them, with their noses going in the air,” he said.
The mother grizzly locked in on him and silent tension exploded into absolute chaos as the bear charged Clement, and he opened fire.
The cubs bolted and ran off when the shooting started, and Clement and his companions never saw them again.
The mother grizzly’s attack was utterly ferocious, he said.
“She just leaped. She just charged right at me with her mouth wide open,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything move that fast, she covered that 10-12 yards in less than a second.
“When it came at me it was making this noise, not really growling, but more like a ‘huff, huff, huff.’”
Clement fired as fast as he could; he’s still not sure how many rounds.
“It bit into my left thigh, and it would not let go,” he continued. “It just bit into my thigh and starting shaking its head.”
It was then Clement he noticed that, although he was still pulling his pistol’s trigger, nothing was happening.
“As the bear was still clamped onto my leg, I was finally able to look down and see that my gun was jammed,” he said.
Clearing a jam in a semiautomatic pistol can be chore even under the best of circumstances on a shooting range.
Clement managed to do it with a 600-pound grizzly clamped on his leg trying to ragdoll him.
“Once I cleared the jam, I put the gun as close to its head as I could and shot a couple of more times,” he said. “It let go and rolled off me. I knew that I had killed that bear.”
Let’s stop right there. You can read the rest of the horrible story at Cowboy State Daily.
While I don’t like or own Glocks, they certainly have a reputation for being a reliable gun. This isn’t the first instance I’ve read about 10mm guns jamming (FTF, FTE) in all sorts of make and models. And then this happened.
I’ve also heard it said that you just have to test it out to find what ammo the gun “likes.” Okay, whatever. You know what? My 1911s like everything. Even the 1911 that I modified with the 22# spring to take 450 SMC will shoot lighter loads without complaints or hiccups.
With the possibility of shooting a .44 magnum wheel gun, or a 1911 shooting 450 SMC, or a modified gun shooting 460 Rowland, I don’t see the attraction of 10mm semiautomatic pistols. You know how to unjam a revolver, right? Pull the trigger again (assuming the cylinder isn’t locked for some reason).
I’m sure some readers will rush to the defense of the 10mm semiauto lineup, especially Glocks, but you have now heard this anecdotal evidence that there was something very wrong with this picture.
If you’re going to be in the bush, choose wisely.
