12-Year-Old Boy Saves Father From 200-Pound Bear Attack

A 12-year-old boy saved his father from a black bear attack in western Wisconsin.

The boy, Owen Beierman, fired a gun and killed the 200-pound animal that was attacking his father and pinning him to the ground.

Ryan Beierman, 43, who was bitten in the face during the attack in the woods near the family's cabin, was saved.

"I was lying on my back," his father told the Minnesota Star Tribune. "Owen was a hero. He shot the bear and killed it right on top of me," added the man, who was left with a large scar on his face and wounds on his arms and legs.

Recalling the attack, he said the animal was "positioned like a cat about to attack."

"The next thing I knew, he was on top of me. He attacked me and knocked me to the ground," he said. “The bear was fighting for its life, and I was fighting for mine,” he recalled.

Beierman said he grabbed his “gun initially hoping to scare the bear off with a warning shot,” but to no avail.

In fact, the father and son had been hunting and had already shot the same animal, which had fled, wounded. They later encountered the bear again. When he realized the attack, the child fired a gun.

“All I could see were its claws and teeth. I put my right arm up to block it. I remember the first bite,” the father said. “The bear kept coming. It wouldn’t let me go,” he added, recalling that he then noticed a flash of light coming from the barrel of the rifle. The bullet knocked the bear down on top of him.

Neighbors stepped in to help and took the father and son to the hospital.

"I was proud of Owen. He held up really well," his father said. "But after it was all over, you could tell he was pretty shaken up," he added.

"I told my wife I wasn't going to hunt bears anymore. I don't know now, but she'll have something to say. It was a wild ride. It was a hell of a night, to say the least," he concluded.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources confirmed the incident and said the hunt was legal.