A Kentucky hunter was taken to a Juneau hospital early Friday morning after being mauled by a brown bear in Southeast Alaska, according to Alaska State Troopers.
The U.S. Coast Guard transported Douglas Adkins, 57, of Jenkins, Kentucky, Friday morning from Admiralty Island, south of Angoon, troopers wrote in a dispatch.
His injuries are not life-threatening, according to troopers.
Around 8:30 p.m. Thursday, a Juneau-based big game guide and Adkins, whom troopers described as a client, were returning from a brown bear hunt to the beach at Chaik Bay when they came across a brown bear a short distance away. The two were using headlamps, troopers wrote.
The brown bear was startled and attacked Adkins. After a short while, the bear backed off and left the area, troopers said.
It was dark and the incident happened quickly, wrote Alaska State Trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters.
A crewmember from their vessel, Sultana, notified the Coast Guard Sector Juneau command center at about 11:30 p.m. Thursday that a bear had mauled a member of their hunting party and that the man had "multiple puncture wounds," the Coast Guard wrote in a release.
The Coast Guard arrived around 2 a.m. Friday and took the injured man to a Juneau hospital, where he remained Friday, said Ryan Scott, regional supervisor for the Department of Fish and Game's wildlife conservation division in Douglas.
Scott said the two people were armed but didn't fire any shots at the bear.
Few additional details were available Friday afternoon. Fish and Game had yet to speak with the mauling victim, Scott said.
The department will only attempt to locate and kill a bear if a mauling was not defensive, Scott said.
"In the area they were in, there's lots of bears, so whether or not we could actually determine which bear it was is a whole different approach," Scott said.