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Last updated on Thursday, September 19, 2013
(TETON WILDERNESS) - A former Monroe County Sheriff’s Office deputy, who in 2008 swam into a frigid Lake Monroe to rescue a stranded woman clinging to a tree, survived a grizzly bear attack last week while hunting in Wyoming’s Teton Wilderness.
50-year-old David Goodrich, who now lives in Lafayette, suffered a broken femur and abdominal puncture wounds during the attack. He was taken to St. John's Medical Center in Jackson, Wyo., and admitted for treatment of his injuries. Monroe County sheriff's Chief Deputy Mike Pershing says Goodrich returned to his home in Lafayette Tuesday.
Goodrich was a Monroe County deputy for 12 years before resigning in 2011. He was honored in 2008 for swimming 60 feet in the dark to rescue a woman who had driven her car into Lake Monroe.
Teton County Undersheriff Bob Gilliam says Goodrich's companion and hunting guild called in the attack and Teton County Search and Rescue team members flew into the area on the Teton Interagency helicopter to retrieve the two men.
The Jackson Hole Daily reports, Goodrich and his guide were hunting in the Wolverine Creek area when a grizzly came out of the brush onto the trail.
One or both of the men started running, and the bear gave chase, catching Goodrich, who broke his leg trying to escape. The abdominal punctures were attributed to bear bites.
As the bear attacked Goodrich, the guide shot at it four times, causing it to run away. The bear was gone by the time rescuers arrived.
Search and Rescue volunteers flew Goodrich to Flagg Ranch on the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway, where a national park ambulance took him to St. John's Medical Center. The guide was not injured during the incident.
Representatives of the U.S. Forest Ser-vice and Wyoming Game and Fish Department refused to release more details either of the incident or of the fate of the bear because the matter is under investigation.
The incident is the fifth bear attack reported in the Greater Yellowstone area this year.
In two encounters Aug. 15, four people -- two hikers and two researchers -- were attacked by grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Those two incidents occurred about 30 minutes apart, one in Yellowstone National Park and one near Island Park, Idaho. None of the victims had life-threatening wounds.
The Yellowstone attack occurred at about 11:30 a.m. on the Cygnet Lakes Trail several miles southwest of Canyon Village. A party of four hikers came across a grizzly cub on the trail. Its mother appeared at close range and charged the group, wounding two hikers.
The second attack occurred about a half-hour later 50 miles west on Bureau of Land Management land in Idaho. Two contracted habitat technicians were collecting information in the Shotgun Valley west of Island Park Reservoir when a grizzly charged, biting one person on the thigh and backside, and the second on the hands.
The Island Park attack took place about 10 miles north of a July 29 encounter that left a wildlife technician with minor injuries.
And in mid-June, a 63-year-old man was irrigating fields southwest of Cody when a grizzly attack left him with injuries that were not life-threatening
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