A 37-year-old father of five was killed by grizzly bears while he worked as a guide on a hunting trip.
Mark Uptain was killed in Wyoming, US, by two grizzly bears while leading a client on a hunting expedition. The customer, Cory Chubon from Florida, sustained leg, chest and arm injuries in the attack, but survived.
Wyoming Game and Fish Department have said two grizzlies, which matched the description of those which attacked the two men, have been trapped and killed.
Brad Hovinga, regional supervisor for the department, said the animals were not behaving normally.
A GoFundMe page was set up for Mark’s family, which said:
Mark Uptain passed away in a tragic hunting accident on September 14th. He was doing one of activities he had extreme passion for.
An experienced hunting guide in the backcountry of Wyoming. While preparing to pack a Elk out, Mark was attacked by a Bear and sadly did not make it.
Even more then the outdoors Mark loved his beautiful wife Sarah and their 5 amazing kids.
The two men had been hunting elk, and were planning to retrieve one which Chubon had killed. They went back the next day to get it when the bears attacked.
Speaking to WESH 2 News, as per MailOnline, Chubon said:
I don’t even know if I would ever even imagine seeing something like that happening in my life.
In probably one of the most poignant moments of all of it, when that bear did have me by the back of the leg, thinking to myself, this is it, this is my death, this is how I’m dying.
Chubon was able to escape and call for help, but received multiple injuries. He was airlifted to hospital and later released. The attack is still under investigation.
Earlier this year, a father and son were caught on video killing a black bear and her cubs in Alaska, according to police.
The two skied to a remote bear den on an Alaskan island, shot the mother bear in front of her two cubs before turning the rifle on them in a display of reckless savagery, authorities said.
The men claim they didn’t know the black bears were part of an observation programme nor did they know the slaughter was caught on video by a camera outside the den.
Andrew Renner, 41, and son Owen Renner, 18, have since been charged with multiple counts, including the illegal killing of a bear and both cubs. It’s illegal to kill black bear cubs or sows with cubs in most of Alaska, according to state law.
The camera which captured the shocking video was placed on Esther Island in Prince William Sound, as part of a bear study by the US Forest Service and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
The mother bear had been fitted with a GPS tracking collar and a camera monitoring her den, which captured the senseless killings on video, as Washington Post reports.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.