Paul Bickford
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (June 20/05) - A heroic yet fatal battle for survival played itself out in the bush about 350 km northeast of Fort Smith last week.

Myles Carter of Hay River rescued his mother from a black bear attack moments after they landed at a family-owned fishing camp on June 15.

Merlyn Carter of Hay River was the victim of a fatal bear attack northeast of Fort Smith at the family fishing camp. His wife Jean and son Myles were later attacked by the same bear shortly after they arrived at the camp.

Tragically, he then discovered his father had been killed earlier by the same bear.

It is believed Merlyn Carter, 71, of Hay River died late Tuesday or early Wednesday morning. At the time, he was alone at Nonacho Lake, preparing for the arrival of sports fishermen.

While Myles Carter tied up the aircraft, his mother, Jean, said she was worried about her husband, who was not at the dock to meet them, and began to walk up a small hill to the camp's main cabin.

"She started screaming, 'Myles! Bear, bear!'" Carter says.

When he looked up, a black bear was running down the hill, about 75 feet from his 69-year-old mother.

"It was fixated on her, running straight for her," he says. "I couldn't believe the aggressiveness. I've never seen a bear run towards a human like that."

Believing the bear was going to overtake her, Jean Carter stopped about 20 feet from the dock, turned around, and faced it. She waved her coat at the threatening animal.

The bear slowed its advance, but kept coming toward his mother, Myles Carter says.

"It was just like how a cat comes up on a bird."

He ran past his mother towards the bear with his arms in the air, trying to scare it away. "The bear didn't look at me. It didn't even flinch."

Carter grabbed a barrel ramp loader from the dock to use as a weapon. "That's all I had."

Carter hit the animal on the head with the 60-pound steel loader, a piece of equipment used to roll barrels off of an airplane.

"He stopped, but he didn't look at me," Carter says. "He still looked at my Mom."

Bear walks away

After a few seconds, the bear turned and walked away. Jean Carter got into the plane and her son retrieved a survival rifle - an over-and-under .22 and .410 - from beneath supplies in the aircraft, then went to find his father.

Inside the main cabin, Carter found a .30-30 rifle lying across the arms of a chair and four shells on the seat of the chair. Carter picked up the rifle and loaded it.

Walking out of the cabin, Carter saw the bear next to his father's body on the path that leads to the outhouse.

"That's when I shot the bear," he says.

The bear ran and Carter says he eventually put four bullets into the animal before it fell.

"I thought, 'There is no way you're getting away from me. There is no way you're leaving this island after what you've done,'" Carter says.

He went back to his father's body, but couldn't bring himself to go closer than about 40 feet. "I could see enough to know that he wasn't alive."

His sister, Kandee Froese, says their mother knew there was something wrong when she saw her son return to the plane. "When she saw Myles' face, she knew it was the worst."

The Carters have operated the camp for 45 years and no one had ever been attacked by a bear. The family says one or two bears might wander into the camp each spring.

Police estimate the bear to be a two-year-old male.

The victim's body was sent to Edmonton for a post-mortem examination and formal identification.

Despite the often tragic consequences, bear attacks in the NWT are relatively rare.

There have been four known maulings, two of them fatal and both by black bears, in the last five years, including last week's death of Merlyn Carter.

The other incidents were:

* June 2001 - Kyle Harry, 18, was killed by a black bear at Prosperous Lake, near Yellowknife.

* August 2003 - A woman picking berries at Gungi Creek, five miles outside of Tuktoyaktuk, was attacked by a grizzly bear.

* August 2004 - A 24-year-old man was attacked by a grizzly bear near the abandoned Colomac Mine site.