Two hunters who shot 530-pound grizzly 24 times share their stunning story of survival

ISLAND PARK — Dangling from the jaws of a 530-pound grizzly, 20-year-old Riley Hill’s body flung from side-to-side as his hunting buddy Braxton Meyers fired round after round into the bear’s hulking frame. The grizzly’s ferocious teeth sunk deep into his arm, puncturing the skin to the bone, as he screamed and fought back during the longest 30 seconds of his life.

“It was lifting me off the ground and then slamming me back on the ground,” Hill said. “… It was like playing tug of war with your dog, but he was playing it with my arm and ripping it apart.”

Moments earlier, the bear had charged out of nowhere, dramatically altering a peaceful morning as the two hunters from Rexburg and Menan faced one of the fiercest predators in North America.

The men shared their heroic story of friendship and survival in an exclusive interview with EastIdahoNews.com.

The attack

On Sunday, Hill and Meyers were archery hunting for elk in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, west of Henrys Lake in Island Park.

“We were really excited to get up there and go explore the country, see some wildlife and some elk,” Hill said. “… We’ve had a lot of elk on our trail cams up there. So we were excited, like, this is going to be such a good year.”

At 7 a.m., they dropped off 18-year-old Boone Meyers, Braxton’s brother, and a 17-year-old friend on Schoolhouse Ridge, located about 30 minutes up the Continental Divide Trail from U.S. Highway 20.

The two backtracked down the trail, arriving at a little canyon about a mile away.

They parked their Razor on a hill and began hiking down until they came to a clearing where they paused and searched the area.

“We don’t want to spook anything,” Hill said.

At about 7:20 a.m., he stepped forward about 10 feet when he heard a “loud thud.”

Turning to look at Braxton Meyers, he saw his friend yell out.

“I just see him looking in the trees and he goes, ‘Oh crap, that’s a bear!’” Hill said.

Meyers said he looked behind and saw the grizzly charging towards him on all fours.

“I could have reached out and grabbed his head,” he said. “… The only thing that I could think was, ‘take off on a sprint so that Riley can get his gun out.’”

Hill dropped his archery bow, pulled a 10mm Springfield from the holster on his hip and shot the bear once in the right side.

“Grizzly bears don’t usually get off their target, but this one did,” Hill said. “This one turned looked right at me, and he’s charging, charging fast.”

The two friends were only about twelve feet apart from each other, and Meyers tripped and fell on the ground.

Hill had time to shoot the bear with three more bullets in the face and shoulder region before its iron jaws clamped down on his arm.

Immediately, the grizzly began to fling Hill around.

Meyers stood up and saw the bear attacking Hill.

He “fumbled around,” pulled out his Taurus 1911 .45 ACP pistol and fired four to five shots at the bear before the gun jammed.

The bear continued to flail Hill from side-to-side as Meyers cleared the feed.

“I was having to pick my shots careful,” Meyers said. “… By then, the bear’s on top of Riley, and Riley’s shoulders are between (its) front feet and his legs are kind of kicked out from its stomach. … I couldn’t see anything Riley was doing. I just could see the bear on him.”

Meyers ran up right next to the bear, continuing to shoot.

“When Braxton hit it, I could feel the bullets hitting the bear through my arm,” Hill said. “(It) wasn’t hitting my arm, but I could just feel the repercussion from the bullets hitting the bear.”

One of the rounds came within two to three inches of his head, he reported.

“(The bear) just kind of looked up at me, and I saw its eyes, and I just started (shooting),” Meyers said. “It put its head back down, and I shot some more (in the spine), and (that) did the trick.”

During one shot in the barrage, Hill felt the bear’s grip on his arm loosen slightly.

With his one free hand, Hill said he “ripped open that jaw, ripped my arm out, and then I remember I stood up, and I was freaking out. I didn’t know if the bear was coming after me again.”

He grabbed his gun off the ground and fired three more rounds at the grizzly’s head.

In total, the hunters shot 24 bear bullets at the grizzly to bring it down.

The rescue

Hill said he didn’t know at the time that he was injured.

At Meyer’s request, he pulled off his jacket and shirt.

“I looked at his arm, I was like, you know, this is bad,” Meyers said.

Using first aid skills he remembered from Boy Scouts, he wrapped Hill’s shirt around his arm and applied two tourniquets, using their belts to keep pressure on the wound.

Meyers dialed 911 and requested an ambulance or a helicopter.

Meanwhile, his brother Boone Meyers and a friend had heard the gunshots and screams a mile away. Braxton Meyers sent them a pin with their location and Boone took off sprinting, arriving at the site of the attack in seven minutes.

“All I saw was just this massive bear lying on the ground. It was a wild, wild site, to be honest,” Boone Meyers said. “They were up, both still alive luckily.”

The three hiked back to the Razor, hoping to place themselves in range of their rescuers.

“It was one of the hardest climbs of my life. It was a painful one too,” Hill said, as blood spurted out of his wounds about every 15 steps.

Hopping into the Razor, they barreled across a boulder field, scouting for a location for the helicopter to land.

“I know people have felt worse pain, but I’d still rate it an eight out of 10,” Hill said.

He was airlifted to Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Hospital where he received 40 staples and numerous stitches.

Miraculously, the grizzly failed to puncture any arteries.

Hill can still move his arm and was released from the hospital on Monday. Doctors estimate it will take at least two months for his arm to recover.

‘King of the Hill’

The grizzly attack was the first human encounter in the region this year, said Idaho Fish and Game Regional Director Matt Pieron.

The bears are protected under the Endangered Species Act, and it is illegal to harm a bear unless in self-defense.

Idaho Fish and Game officers conducted a thorough investigation and determined that Hill and Braxton Meyer’s actions were justified.

The two friends learned later that local ranchers had long called that bear the “King of the Hill.”

“This bear has always been a problem up there of cattle, and there’s a lot of farmers that … (are) pretty happy with us because we took out the bear that was eating their cattle,” Hill said.

The bear was 20-years-old, an extraordinarily long life for a grizzly in the wild.

“It was a fighting bear,” Braxton Meyers said. “Another bear or some animal had torn one of its ears off. That was the ear that was facing up the hill, and so it didn’t hear us coming down until we were on the side that had the good ear, and that’s when it got up and come at us.”

The bear had been surprised while it was burrowing in a day bed.

“They’ll dig a hole, and they’ll pull brushes and scrub and whenever to hide them,” Hill said. “So we spooked it, and we weren’t trying to.”

An estimated 1,000 grizzly bears reside in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana.

While the two hunters are grateful they survived, they are sad the grizzly was killed.

“Sad it had to happen,” Hill said. “I’m glad I’m still here to be able to tell this story. My mom says she’s glad she doesn’t have to go to a funeral this week.”

They credit one another for saving both their lives.

“It makes your whole body just shiver thinking about — it was two friends that saved each other,” said Monica Hill, Riley’s mother. “Riley saw Braxton almost to be bear food and shot, and had Braxton not killed the bear, Riley would not be here – 100% he would not.”

His father Brian Hill considers the Meyers brothers as sons.

“I’m just so eternally grateful that he’s here with us, that they kept their composure, that they were smart enough to do what they needed to do to get off that mountain and keep him safe,” Brian Hill said.

Meanwhile, the two friends still have major milestones on the horizon.

Braxton Meyers’s wedding with his fiancé Macey Steers is set for Oct. 12, and he’s asked Riley Hill to be his best man.

“A lot of people say they’ll take a bullet for a friend. Well, I got mauled by a bear for mine,” Riley Hill said.