Picture this: You're walking your dog on a nature trail one fine and sunny afternoon, enjoying the tranquility all around. Then, out of nowhere, you hear a massive grunt nearly on top of you, and the breath of whatever's there hits your neck like someone opened a window to hell behind you. You turn and come face to face with a Canadian black bear - a 500-pound fur-covered killing machine, staring you down with hateful, hungry eyes. It's pretty clear that despite whatever your plans were, Mother Nature has you set for a deathmatch at exactly that moment, and you're not exactly the fittest for survival.
So what do you do? The average guy's reaction would be some variation of collapsing into a fetal position while losing bowel control, or running like hell in blind horror. Both methods have been vigorously tested in the wild since the dawn of mankind, and its effectiveness has proven disappointing. In other words, there haven't been many survivors.
Jim West, however, is not an average guy. The scenario above actually happened to West, a 45 year-old man from British Columbia - except he killed the bear. With a stick.
West was walking his dogs, minding his own business, when the bear came up behind him. He turned to find the massive beast inches from his face. "A'll I saw was eyes full of hatred," he told DailyMail. "I had no options. So I stuck my foot up and tried to kick her in the face." Unfortunately for West, even a Jean-Claude Van Damme roundhouse wouldn't do shit to a full-grown bear. The attacking behemoth responded by charging and knocking him to the ground.
"I rolled onto my stomach and clasped my hands at the back of my neck," Mr West said. "She tore into my skull at the back of my head, moved over and bit me on the left side of my body, on my ribs and left arm."
It was right about then that West remembered a running trait among the males in his family: shockingly massive balls. The Canadian rolled over and managed to fight his way to his feet, at which point he grabbed a stick about as thick as his arm and channeled his inner Barry Bonds.
"I said, in effect, bring it on sweetie," he said. "I took one step forward — smash! I swung the stick and broke it over her head. She kind of stood there and shook it off, like she was stunned. I realised if I didn't continue the attack she would knock me to the ground again and I would not get up." So West did what any deathmatch underdog with an unlikely upper hand would do - he brained the monster.
"I swung my piece of wood like a sledgehammer driving spikes and I kept swinging till she was lying flat on the ground and there was blood coming out of her nose."
West crushed the bear's skull with the stick, killing it. He then walked a mile to a local lodge, where he was transported to hospital, given 60 stitches in his head and a lifetime subscription to Whoopass magazine.
Wildlife officials and survival experts across the board all agreed that West should have been killed in the encounter. Sadly, the bear was the mother of two young cubs, which had to be euthanised because they wouldn't survive the approaching Canadian winter without her.
Does West regret his actions, after having found out about the cubs? Hell no, he says. If he hadn't killed her, he'd have undoubtedly been gobbled up, ridiculous Canadian accent and all.
