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Show Rancher, 65, in Death Fight With Mad Mother Bear Aged Man, Left for Dead By Savage Beast, Kills It. JACKSON, WYO. A savage mother bear, attacking to proteel her two cubs, was clubbed to death by Bernie Cole. 65-year-old rancher, after the animal had knocked him down and left him for dead, friends of Cole reported. Cole, a husky, 175-pound bachelor employed as a caretaker on a ranch owned by Eleanor M. Patterson, publisher of the Washington Times-Herald, Times-Herald, was attacked by the bear while cleaning out a beaver dam on a stream that runs through the property, 16 miles north of Jackson. Cole told Homer Richards, a neighbor, that he had seen her two cubs playing in the vicinity but had paid no attention to them. He went about his work and a few minutes later the mother bear jumped him with a savage roar. Cole had a 5-foot-long, water-soaked water-soaked aspen in his hand but, he never had an opportunity to use it. Felled by Animal. - The bear felled him with one swipe of a huge paw. Cole was knocked about 15 feet by the blow, he said, but did not lose consciousness. conscious-ness. He retained his presence of mind and lay completely quiet, hoping hop-ing the bear would go away. Instead, ,she pressed the attack, biting him savagely on the shoulders shoul-ders and legs. Knowing that she would crush him to death if he made a single move. Cole lay still despite the pain. Finally, convinced that he was dead, the bear wandered off. Cole lay motionless for about 10 or 15 minutes and then got up, still holding hold-ing onto the water-soaked aspen. No sooner had he reached his feet, however, than the bear rushed out of a clump of bushes and charged him again. "I swung with my club and landed a lucky blow on her head, knocking her down and stunning her," Richards Rich-ards quoted Cole as saying. "After that, I just beat her until 1 was all tired out." Not Seriously Injured. The attack occurred near the ranch barn and after he had killed the bear, Cole saddled up a horse and rode 10 miles to a power station where he was given first aid and driven to a hospital at Jackson. Cole was suffering from multiple cuts on the shoulders and legs and a severe cut on the head, but was not injured seriously, physicians at the hospital said. He was kept at the hospital until the next morning and discharged. Bill Wallace, Jackson hotel proprietor, pro-prietor, and the sheriff of Teton county said they saw the bear and estimated it weighed 700 pounds. When it stood up, they said, it towered' several inches above Cole, who is 5 feet 8 inches tall. Richards said the bear apparently thought Cole Intended to harm her cubs. A brown bear, he explained, seldom attacks without provocation, provoca-tion, but when she thinks her cubs are endangered, a mother bear will attack anything without hesitation. |