12-Year-Old 'Shot That Bear and Killed It on Top of Me'

A father-son hunting trip went awry in Wisconsin earlier this month when a black bear went on the attack, and the 12-year-old is now being hailed as a hero for saving his dad. The AP reports that 43-year-old Ryan Beierman was near the family's hunting cabin in "the thick western Wisconsin woods" on Sept. 6 with son Owen, about 90 miles northeast of Minneapolis, when a 200-pound bear they'd spotted earlier—and which Owen had already shot and wounded—reemerged and charged at him from about 6 feet away. "He was in a stance like a cat about to pounce," Beierman tells the Star Tribune. "The next thing I know he was on me."

"The bear was fighting for its life, and I was fighting for mine," he adds. That's when Owen "scrambled with his hunting rifle," firing "a shot from his hip that struck the bruin's vitals," per the Tribune. "I was flat on my back and could feel the bullet going through the bear," the boy's dad says, estimating the entire attack lasted under a minute. "Owen was a hero. He shot that bear and killed it on top of me." A neighbor rushed Beierman and his son to the hospital.

The AP notes that Beierman was bitten by the bear on his arm, leg, and forehead and also had to get nearly two dozen stitches to put back in place a piece of skin that got ripped on his cheek. A conservation officer with the state's Department of Natural Resources says Beierman's hunt was legal. Officials say bear attacks are rare, with the Wisconsin DNR logging only nine reported incidents between 2013 and 2022, per the BBC. "I was proud of Owen," Beierman tells the Tribune. "He really held it together." However, "after it was all over, you could tell he was pretty shaken." (More mauling stories.)