#019 Beyond the Bear: Part 1 - Tyler Johnson

Tyler Johnson grew up in Sterling, Alaska, raised in the outdoors alongside his dad, a longtime game warden. Hunting, fishing, hiking, and navigating wild places weren’t just pastimes — they were normal to life on the Kenai Peninsula.

In this episode, Tyler recounts his sudden encounter with a grizzly bear in August 2024 at Resurrection Pass in gripping detail. What happened in those moments, what went right, what went wrong, and how even preparing for this exact scenario still wasn’t enough. He walks through the decisions made under pressure, the reality of how fast things unfolded, and what survival actually looks like when theory meets real life. 

But the story doesn’t end with the attack. 

Tyler also opens up about the aftermath — the physical recovery, the emotional weight, and the unexpected wave of national and international attention that followed. We talk about how that experience reshaped his perspective and ultimately led him toward a new mission: developing a device aimed at preventing similar encounters and helping keep both people and wildlife safer in the future. 

This is more than a survival story. It’s about preparation, humility, responsibility, and how one moment in the Alaska backcountry became the start of something bigger. 

Follow Tyler on social media:

Instagram @grizzlylife907

Facebook @Tyler B Johnson

TikTok @tyler.johnsonak

Transcript

The State I Am In (00:25)
Hello and welcome to the state I'm in where every conversation points north. Here we discuss the topics that Alaskans and perhaps everyone should care about. I'm your host, Manny Coelho a fellow Alaskan and your guide to the conversations that Alaskans want to hear from the individuals who are leading the way.

My guest today is Tyler Johnson. Tyler grew up in Sterling, Alaska. He was raised in the outdoors and heavily influenced by his dad, a game warden, and spent much of his life hunting, fishing, hiking, and honestly doing what a lot of us just consider normal growing up here on the Kenai Peninsula. He's the kind of Alaskan who knows the trails, respects wildlife, and feels most at home out in the woods and sharing it with others. Until one day, everything changed.

So last August, Tyler was out hiking and hunting with his dad when a routine day out in the mountains turned into a violent life or death encounter with a grizzly bear. What followed happened in seconds, but it reshaped everything, how he views the outdoors, personal safety, and a new found purpose for what he's working towards now. In this conversation, we talk about growing up Alaskan, the realities of wildlife encounters that most people just only read about.

what actually happens in a bear attack and how preparation, training and calm decision-making can be the difference between life and death. This story made worldwide news, but it doesn't just stop there because Tyler's story isn't just about I survived. It leads somewhere unexpected into an idea, a mission and a project that could change how people safely experience the wilderness moving forward.

This conversation ended up being so big and took such a wild turn at the end that it became a two-part episode. And trust me, the ending of part one sets up something you won't see coming in part two. And now my conversation with Tyler Johnson.

The State I Am In (02:14)
Tyler Johnson, so good to finally meet you. ⁓ heard about your story. We have a lot of stories that you're gonna share, I hope. And excited just to kind of hear them firsthand from you. And again, excited to just listen to fellow Alaskan, someone that grew up here, explore the outdoors, done all the things that we kind of get used to living here. Hunting, fishing, hiking, adventuring, seeing the...

you know, the just vast beauty of this place and everything it has to offer. But you've got a pretty special story and I'm not gonna lie. I'm gonna kind of let my audience kind of hang on a little bit until we get to that one. But you had a pretty crazy experience with a bear out in the woods and things got kind of crazy and it's kind of a big deal. And it was a pivotal moment for you and kind of the stuff that you are working on now.

after that experience. So I'm really looking forward to diving into that. But first, I just want to say welcome and thanks for being here,

Tyler (03:19)
What's up? ⁓

The State I Am In (03:21)
It's really good

that we can make this happen. Even virtually, know that you're in Austin now, but you were born and raised here. Everyone's experience in Alaska kind of starts off a little bit differently, whether you grew up here or not. Why don't you go ahead and just kind of tell me a little bit more ⁓ about you, where you grew up and the stuff that you were into as an Alaska boy.

Tyler (03:46)
boy. ⁓ well, I grew up in Sterling Alaska. Some call it a nap town as what it used to be called and, ⁓ nap town. Shout out nap town. Yeah. ⁓ yeah, I, I grew up on Scout Lake and, ⁓ my father is a game warden. My mother was a nurse, ⁓ two sisters, couple of dogs and horses. I just.

The State I Am In (03:54)
Yep, Town. Shout out Nap Town Brewery.

sweet.

Tyler (04:15)
Growing up with a game warden, man, I didn't realize how different it was until, like you just said, you're used to growing up and going camping and fishing. That's just something we do. And now moving to Austin, everyone's like, that's not normal. I'm like, man, you should make it normal. Yeah, I went to SoHi High, high school, played football there and hockey. I just try to stay as active as I can.

The State I Am In (04:30)
Yeah.

Tyler (04:45)
Coached hockey to the Kenai River Queens. Shout out Kenai River Queens. That's right. ⁓

The State I Am In (04:49)
Yeah. A rowdy

bunch. Okay. They're not all rowdy, I'm not a hockey player, but I have played softball and they are a riot playing softball too in the summertime. They are a fun team to play against. Always a good time with the Kenai River Queens. Yeah.

Tyler (04:54)
fuck are you?

I honestly I just didn't know what I was getting into. ⁓ think her name was Rachel Hankey. She's like, yeah, we're looking for some coaches to my buddy, Mikey Griffin and I and we were just doing beer league. We looked at each other. like, you know what, that might be some fun. And we had no clue what we're getting into. And it was like, we got there 30 women and we just started telling them what to do. And they looked at us like, you don't tell us what to do. ⁓

The State I Am In (05:18)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tyler (05:34)
It's like they fight back, no.

The State I Am In (05:37)
You're merely a figurehead, sir.

Tyler (05:39)
Yeah, he just told us that. Yeah, it was was a heck of an experience. I think I did that for five years and. Boy, that was fun. Cold, cold, cold nights practicing out on the Kenai rink, but it was so worth it.

The State I Am In (05:54)
Growing up with Game Warden as a dad, did you, I mean, talk about that experience. Were you quick to invite your buddies out hunting and fishing or was like, don't go with Tyler because his dad's a Game Warden. Did you experience that at all?

Tyler (06:11)
boy, yeah. ⁓ So my friends do know when I go out fishing with them, you know, there's been a couple of times where they drag them in and throw the fish back. What are you doing? I was like, brother, come on, man. Like, what do you expect you hooked in the belly? Like, I'm not gonna like, I can't do that. It's not it's not in me to do so. Right. And also on the flip side.

when you go hunting with a game warden, well, you're like, can I? So he said yes. So felt pretty safe with that. And also probably the best ⁓ hiking, hunting, just adventure buddy you can ask for, you know, because obviously they, they, they're doing a job that you're out in the woods constantly. They love their job. My dad loves his job. The guy is still

The State I Am In (06:40)
Yeah, right.

Yeah. Right.

Tyler (07:06)
He's still going. He's like the Terminator. 61 years old, dude. And old man anyways, he's gonna like that. And he's just, I shared that with him. And just growing up, we used to just go out to the cabins. Doroshin bay cabin, cards cabin when I was still there. Spent New Year's out on Tustamena cabins. It's just hitting snow machines, going out there as a little kid, burning your mouth on hot cocoa.

You know, it's just, it's just the stars out there too. ⁓ my gosh. Yeah.

The State I Am In (07:42)
What are the earliest memories that you have? Was he doing this when you were really young?

Tyler (07:47)
yeah,

my whole family's in Minnesota, but before I was born, they all, well not they all, my mom and father moved up to Alaska because they offered him a job as a game warden here. And he stayed at the cabin on Skilak. There's like a little game warden cabin out there. That's where our first house was out there on Skilak yeah, since I've been born, I just got born into a game warden as a father and just, God.

The State I Am In (08:07)
dang.

Tyler (08:17)
How lucky was I? It was great.

The State I Am In (08:18)
That's

awesome. You know, I feel like it can go one of two ways. you either that is your lifestyle and I think about it all the time. Like I can, is my son gonna love the things that I love or is he totally gonna go the other direction and be like, I hate it. So your dad must have done a good job of like being like, this is what my life's all about and introducing it to you where you actually like it too.

Tyler (08:34)
Mm-hmm.

There might have been, you know, he just dragged me along until I liked it. You know, because he's like, I'm going to do it anyway. So you're going to come with me. And then it just ended up being like, you know what? After a while, was like, this is kind of fun. But, you know, when you're a small kid, you know, three, four years old, just ripping across Skilak on a snow machine, it gets pretty cold. But, you know, bundle up like a Michelin man. And yeah, there's so many just these little memories of.

going on a snow machine and seeing open water being absolutely freaked out. But you he just like kept on going. It was a good time.

The State I Am In (09:19)
you mentioned offline that you had done some stuff out in Adak ⁓ I mean, Adak is a place where I dream of going. I've heard so many cool stories about that place. It's so remote, right at the end of the Aleutian chain. And it seems like every story is tied to

going out there and then getting stuck there and not being able to get back just because of weather. But we can talk about that. Why don't you talk about like some, you know, the type of hunting that you're into outdoor, like what was your go-to stuff or go-to activities, I guess. Were you more of a hunter or a fisherman, hiking? Did you do it all? Like, you know, where did you kind of gravitate towards when it comes to the outdoors?

Tyler (10:02)
All of it, haha, you know it was for hunting, you know, there's a season so When the spring hit I just I mean before the snow would melt I'd be up on skyline You know post hole and all the way up there with my friends So I just gravitated towards hiking because that's just what I love to do I just I love being up on the mountains getting away Feeling the breeze the smell the crisp air it's just

intoxicating and addicting and the hard work because I like to work out and climbing mountains can kick your butt sometimes and I just I loved it I loved every second of it you know you got slaughter ridge, see-saw and I ended up just bringing my drag my friends up just like my dad that he drug me out but I dragged my friends with me like come on come out hiking with me join me and then later on towards the year I would go hunting you know in August ⁓

The State I Am In (10:38)
Yeah, totally.

Yeah. ⁓

Tyler (10:59)
Obviously you got stock-eye fishing. I caught 60 pounds this year rod and reel. Couldn't get me out of the river. Yeah.

The State I Am In (11:05)
jeez.

Sweet. It was an amazing year. It was an epic year. Yeah. It's one of the years where I have friends from Fairbanks. I was in Fairbanks before I moved down here. It is the number one thing that I like to gloat and boast about, about living on the peninsula once the summertime comes. Cause they will make a huge long trek down to the peninsula.

Tyler (11:11)
my god, yeah, it was crazy.

Mm-hmm.

The State I Am In (11:26)
the fish for maybe a weekend. And I'm like, I just go after work sometimes, I guess. Like, if it runs, I'll get it. And then sometimes you're like, how are you not out there right now? And I'm like, well, I got other stuff to do, you know? And also there's the people aspect, you know, it is super busy. So I can relate with the aspect of trying to get away, you know, going and hiking. I'm sure you come across people on the trail, but it is a nice solitude type activity.

Tyler (11:32)
I fished at one o'clock.

Mm-hmm.

The State I Am In (11:56)
and just kind of gets you in touch with where we live, which is, I mean, they call the Kenai Peninsula like Alaska's playground, and that's for good reason. It definitely feels like that.

Tyler (11:56)
Yeah.

Yeah, so true.

actually, might, some might call me accident prone. I don't know. ⁓ But ⁓ last year before my whole encounter with the bear, I think about three weeks, two, four weeks before that, I was out fishing with my buddy, Philip, and right there, Swiftwater area and.

It was one o'clock in the morning when I got dusk because he tried to catch a limit and then fish some more if it's hot, right? Try to that limit the next day legally. And I hit a, I hit ⁓ a monster. Of course he was a monster. I didn't see it, but it was a monster and he's a monster. I had, I think it was like a three quarter ounce or ounce weight on there. And that fish pulled me forward. And so I like, you know, instinctually.

The State I Am In (12:50)
Yeah, every 50 stories from Monster, for sure.

Tyler (13:03)
jerked back for a second and that one second that I pulled forward and my rod tip went down then back up, know, you don't pull it back towards your face. That hook came out of that fish. That weight went right by my face and I heard a thud into the bank behind me and then a slap of like something wet on my just on my face right here on my lip. And I was like, that was weird. And at split second that weight fell into the river and then took current.

and my lip went, I had a Gamakatsu, it's like size five or six go straight through my lip. And I just went curled up to where the tip wasn't out through yet. You know, so the barb was in my lip. So I was legally caught, right? And I tried for, I mean, Philip came over and tried shining the light on my face. Cause like, Hey, I need some light. I tried pushing that hook through like,

The State I Am In (13:38)
⁓ my gosh

Yeah.

Tyler (14:02)
And that tip would almost make it, but your lips are so malleable, you know? So it just wouldn't go through. And I ended up going to the ER so they had to hold my lip down, have another dude pop it through, then get a pair of clines. Those big, you know, like linemen. I was a lineman for a while, and you have those big clines, and you just went, popped it off and pulled it through.

The State I Am In (14:06)
Yeah.

⁓ Yep.

Tyler (14:27)
it's pretty gnarly looking and it's like straight through my lip. I like, oh, yeah, I posted that one on the the Kenai fishing page and boy the the things that people say on there is just hilarious like, oh, you went to the hospital. You must be some wuss I'm like, you got me. I'm such a Oh, yeah.

The State I Am In (14:43)
People are savages. I want to tell you this though,

you're not, you are not alone. Having worked in the ER, having, you know, work in the urgent care, that is our bread and butter in the summertime, Hooks, hooks in the face. It's not a pleasant experience. That sounds like a brutal one though, right on the top lip like that. Especially too, if they had to take it out with pliers, that kind of says it was probably more involved than the normal ones. A lot of these ones that we do, they'll use the old,

Tyler (15:02)
yeah.

The State I Am In (15:11)
like fishing, they'll wrap like umbilical cord or not umbilical cord. They call it umbilical tape ⁓ which is basically like just little thin, it looks like a shoelace. They'll just wrap it around and like pop it out. And people are like, if I knew it was that easy, I would have done it at home.

Tyler (15:11)
Yeah, the floss, yeah.

Uh-huh.

I I definitely tried.

The State I Am In (15:27)
Yeah, it's rough.

A little side note story. I won't give away any identities here, but we had an old timer. I don't even know if they're local or they're from lower 48, but an old timer with his two adult sons. he hooked them in the same 12 hour shift. He hooked one kid in the morning and then the other kid at night. He was the one fishing and he, know, kind of similar story, got his, his, whipped his pull out of the water and hooked into his

both of his adult sons and they had to come in and get hooks taken out of their face. I was like, don't go fishing with your dad anymore. Like that's the moral of the story here.

Tyler (16:05)
Stay away from him.

The State I Am In (16:09)
So besides this encounter we're gonna talk about, what was your attitude towards wildlife when you're, you know, kicking around in the woods and the outdoors? I'll tell you, for me, I probably don't have a healthy respect for wildlife because you just, you know what's out there and you know like,

If there's a moose in my yard, is it gonna keep me from going and walking across the yard to go get, I got a couple of chickens. Am I gonna go get eggs in the morning just because there's a moose in my yard? I'm probably still gonna go out there and just see what it does. Does it pay attention to me? Yeah, does it look like it's ticked off? And then...

Tyler (16:42)
Stare at it

The State I Am In (16:49)
But I mean, people get their butts kicked by a moose all the time too up here. And so, you know, I haven't had any encounters with bears. Definitely think about it a lot going out in the woods, but you know, a lot of times, especially in the summertime, they're kind of preoccupied with salmon and like, you know, they're there, but you know, not really concerned with people so much, unless you're being like a total a-hole and like getting up in its business or whatever, but.

before this encounter that we're gonna talk about, what was your experience with wildlife out in the

Tyler (17:25)
I've always had a healthy, healthy respect. I like I said, I grew up with a game warden. So always I've been taught bear safety since I was a little, little boy. Right. And, ⁓ you know, I used to go hunting. I used to go across Tustamina, ⁓ which the whole stories of going across Tustamina, hunting with my grandpa, my dad. And we ran into a grizzly bear, like walked up on us and she's

He or she stood up. was like, my God, that's huge. ⁓ and I mean, you, anyone that went hiking with me, ⁓ I would carry a 870 shotgun. ⁓ and I would teach people like, Hey, this is how you use it. Like just in case I get, you know, attacked and I can't use it. I always, it was always in the front of my mind. Like, cause they move fast. I, I, ⁓ I did the bear guard.

Right? Just everything that I did, I knew when I was out in the woods that it was always a possibility. And there's almost no way that you can guess that's going to happen that time. Like you're in their area, right? And we're trying to share this coexistence, enjoying the outdoors, be respectful, make your noise. But it was always in the back of my head, know, if you do see him, give him space. I don't want to mess with that.

Please get it like I'll watch you from a distance. You watch me from a distance. I don't mean to bug you and even moose, you know, that one is a little bit more fuzzy because I grew up with horses and they get in the hay. He's run out of them with pans. Sometimes it didn't work out that well and their ears will go back and you're like, oh, that was a dumb idea. All right.

The State I Am In (19:07)
Gotcha.

Abort, abort!

Tyler (19:16)
Abort mission my wife

looking at me my underwear and big boots running with a bunny hat away from a moose like that was dumb So yeah when it came to bears I was always taught to respect them and I Mean have a healthy fear for them. They're healthy one not it's not going to stop you from going out into the woods It shouldn't stop you from going out in the woods, but do know that is That's a that's a real danger

The State I Am In (19:38)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler (19:45)
It really is. mean, imagine, I don't know if you got, you know, the guy named Brian Shaw, the guy's like six foot eight, 400 pounds, right? Imagine that guy 100 more pounds with or 300 more pounds with claws and teeth like that's you don't want that running at you, right?

The State I Am In (19:58)
Yeah, scary. No.

Yeah, that's nuts.

Let's get into it. I want you to kind of paint the picture of, you know, this day, you know, what your plans were, what you were looking to do, where you're at, and just kind of the lead up into this encounter that you had with this bear. What year are we looking This was last year.

Tyler (20:24)
year. This was

just over, this is last August, August 17th, yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah.

The State I Am In (20:32)
Dang, man, that's crazy. Okay.

I didn't realize it was so soon. For some reason I was thinking it was like two years ago, but I couldn't be getting my stories in my head mixed up. But, so walk me through it. ⁓ What were you looking to do? Where were you at and what happened?

Tyler (20:49)
well first of all, I moved to Austin, right? This is where it all kind of started was I was moving to Austin. I drove my family, my wife, my kid, my two dogs, sold our house, gave my notice at ACS. They offered me a remote job, which is awesome. And I drove them down to Texas nine days and I knew, I told them, I like, I am going back up to Alaska and hunting with my father. That is a non-negotiable.

I never wanted to leave Alaska. I mean, until I knew that it's time, because I've always been a venture and it just was a point in my life where I had to shift. I felt there was a shift in my life and I needed to do something. And Austin was where my wife's podcast company is. And I was like, you know what, that's a good place. I haven't never been there. Let's go there. So I made that shift in life and moved my whole family down.

flew up to Alaska. I never want to miss a year with my father. Anyone. Anyone. I came up this last year. Not hunting, but I went hiking. And we decided to change it up a little bit. Typically, we would go across Tustamina, all the way across Tustamina, past Devil's Bay at the very end to...

Truly or not truly a clear Creek. It's called clear Creek and that's where You know the salmon would go to spawn. It's absolutely gorgeous Tustamena sketchy but gorgeous right just glacier winds coming off it sketchy but gorgeous and that that that's a place where It's always gonna hold a just a really beautiful part in my heart always But we wanted to change it up. So we went to

The State I Am In (22:29)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Tyler (22:45)
They call resurrection pass and I've always wanted to do it. It's a long trail I actually did a college paper on it I mapped it all out. It's gonna take us so many days And My I don't think my dad has actually done the whole trail he might have been down there doing like some search and rescues at some point and We we decided we were going to go take devil's pass

The State I Am In (23:05)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler (23:13)
I had to some crazy names. Resurrection Pass, Devil's Pass. Where do they get these names from? Shit happens there, that's why. ⁓ so we go. we head out, I think it was like a Thursday and.

The State I Am In (23:15)
Yeah. Right. know. Totally.

Some people have been colonized before

Tyler (23:33)
My dad and I, when we start walking or hiking, we're like, we might take our time. No, we just booked it. We went 16 or 15 and a half miles one day with all our hiking gear, just went out. And honestly, it's a beautiful trail. It's super easy to walk. It's for biking. So, 16 miles, 15 miles, it's something, but it's not crazy. It's not like you're hiking up a bushwhacking. And we decided to camp.

The State I Am In (23:51)
Okay.

Tyler (24:01)
near Abernathy Creek, American Creek. You can look it up on the map. There's an area there. It's where all these rivers kind of converge in this area. it's just kind of cool because it's all there's no trees. All of a you see where all these this life used to be and all these trees are at. So it's kind of like a convergence of a whole bunch of creeks. And we were going out there hunting for black bear.

That's kind of been my go-to thing to go hunting for is black bear I love putting in the pressure cooker putting some of those Alaskan blueberries in there with some jalapenos and onions Pulling them out like for you know making some roast or a nice burrito out of them it's just it's so good if you cook it all the way through and You know I got I got a few black bears and this time we were going out there and Now we didn't I got it

I'm usually I get him with like slingshots or just throwing a rock after like a hundred throws and ⁓ Yeah, if you can throw I sure as hell can't ⁓ But so that whole first day we went out hiking we made up our camp and

The State I Am In (25:03)
Yeah, Pretty easy.

Yeah. Yeah.

Tyler (25:22)
We didn't see anything. We saw some wolf tracks. And I, and my, dad told me that, you know, if you see some wolf out there, you can shoot them. Uh, I don't think even if I did see one, wouldn't have, it's not my thing. Uh, I'm more of like, if I'm going to, you know, get an animal, I'm going to eat it. Um, plus I like dogs a lot too. There's like a little thing there for me. Uh, it's just not my thing. And so I was really looking for black bear.

The State I Am In (25:46)
Right.

Tyler (25:51)
That that first day went by and We set up camp we woke up the next day and It's actually been beautiful days out there like 65 degrees sunny and That second day I decided to go I'm gonna climb that mountain because I wanted to climb up there and you know say goodbye to my grandmother she Passed away like two weeks before that So I was like also you get advantage of the whole area

The State I Am In (26:05)
Nice.

Mm.

Tyler (26:20)
Right? they're I'm going to climb this big mountain and say goodbye to my grandmother and give peace and scout around and see if I see any animals. And well, there was no animals up there except for me and my dad. And ⁓ saw a few people on bikes. ⁓ It's kind of cool. You're just looking up there. I see you. You don't know I'm up here. Anyways, kind of creepy. ⁓ You know, have you ever, have you ever done resurrection pass or hear that at all? No.

The State I Am In (26:21)
Yeah.

No, I haven't.

know a lot of people do bike it. I know there are some people that will run the whole thing. There's some ultra runners out there that are psychotic and they'll run the whole thing. But no, I haven't been out there at all.

Tyler (26:55)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's a great hike, man. And there's some cabins out there that are just like all glass around, you know? So yeah. ⁓ yeah, glass walls, yeah. So you know, you can walk. Yeah, we went to go look out one. We didn't know if anyone was in it. I was like, hopefully they're not like just walking around naked in there. That'd be hilarious. Hi.

The State I Am In (27:09)
What? Like glass balls?

Yeah. I mean, I've been in a lot

of public use cabins. It's really surprising to know that there are like some glass walled ones out there. Cause most of the public use cabins I've stayed in are kind of sketch and I've been around for a while, but that's cool. didn't know that.

Tyler (27:39)
Yeah, it has a beautiful view. mean, it makes sense why they would put a glass wall out there. But you have to sign up for it. I digress though. that second day passed and my dad and I, looked at the map and we kind of realized that there was a trail around here. So we had a small map and we got kind of curious and we...

The State I Am In (27:45)
Yeah.

Tyler (28:09)
I kind of want to like try to get out like gold panning out there because he I don't know if you can but Supposedly there's some gold out there The water is cold as hell. So I tried for about five minutes. I was like, nope not worth it And we actually weren't going to go out that day I mean, it was just so nice and we were so beat up from hiking and stuff that we're just like, you know, maybe have a camp day You know sip I have a little glass or a metal mug I put my instant coffee in there with a shot of whiskey and I just kind of

The State I Am In (28:13)
cool.

Tyler (28:38)
hang out there and it's just so awesome. You're in the woods. I just love it. And well, that day, I'm like, you know what? Screw it. Let's go check out this area. We see this ⁓ trail that leads around. It's called American Creek. And we heard if you hike pretty far back there, there might be a cabin back there, like way back there. And I think ⁓ from local knowledge from my father, there's a trail there that...

the troopers use with snow machines. So they put flagging, right? And there was old guys that were guides back there for moose back in the day. So there was a trail back there, but it's not like, you know, like keep it up like they do resurrection. And yeah.

The State I Am In (29:23)
Yeah, kind of off the beaten path, like exist, but

not really well, like not maintained or anything like that.

Tyler (29:30)
The only maintenance crew out there is probably bears and moose because they're going to use the same path of least resistance, right? They're going to use the same thing. And we started on this trail and it started out okay, you know? And we started following these pink flags and they're up higher. And you can see that they're weathered. They're really old.

The State I Am In (29:36)
Yeah, game trail. ⁓

Tyler (29:56)
And the further we get along on this trail of hiking, we realize that it is just, it is a bitch to walk through. And we're sitting there, we lose a trail, backtrack through some boggy stuff, go through some alders, which are just so much fun to navigate through. And we lose a trail a few times. And by this time, it's like one o'clock in the afternoon, the sun's high up in the air. There's like

The State I Am In (30:07)
and

Yeah, terrible.

Tyler (30:23)
absolutely no wind so the bugs are kind of around you and we see that it kind of you're going through this valley side hilling and then it opens up to this bigger valley surrounded by mountain and if you keep on going forward you can make it around this other mountain around there it's like what's around the corner there like it's going to be Eden like is there going to be a beautiful view right

The State I Am In (30:49)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tyler (30:51)
And I think at that point my father and I kind of didn't say it out loud, but we both were like, I don't want to shoot a bear and walk it back through this. So at this time, yeah, what was that?

The State I Am In (30:59)
Yeah, yeah.

I was gonna say a lot of people think that after you've been like, you know, beaten brush for so long, you're like, is it even worth it at this point if we do get something to take it back to camp? Yeah.

Tyler (31:09)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. You gotta think of that sometimes. Sometimes you don't and then you're like, I gotta get out of here. Can't leave that behind. Especially with a game warden. You're bringing everything buddy. Yeah, I had a bear go down a mountain. I had to go get it. That sucked. ⁓

The State I Am In (31:15)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Tyler (31:36)
But this time we were like, let's surround that corner. So my father and I, were both like, let's go on an adventure. So we started going and we still haven't had lunch at this time. And even though it looks like it's flat grass, like you might even tee off at the golf club. Like now you got like these brush and it's actually up to your knees and it's tripping you up and there's some creeks and there's bogs and we're still losing the trail. ⁓ But there's like a dead tree out, out in the middle.

almost like the lion king or somebody's underneath it, you know, it's like, where am I? Right. It's like, there's, there's a marker out there. So we be lying it there and sure as shit, there's a, there's a flag that you just almost gone. Um, and after that tree, I, I remember taking pictures. even remember saying, I'm like my dad, I take pictures all the time. That's why the video of the, what's happening is online.

The State I Am In (32:33)
And for listeners to go look up that video. ⁓

Tyler (32:35)
do it it's crazy

actually you'll you'll know why here in a second and I remember being like yeah I'm like my dad's paparazzi so there's like some pictures of my dad just looking out that distance so stoic right but he's really looking it's like ah there's some alders in front of us and there's a creek and we got to find a way to get through it and so he starts paralleling this creek and where is that where is that

damn flag like it sounds like obsessive. Because I don't want to go through these this it's like thick like Maleficent when she she pulls up all those those vines like you can't make it through it's a lot like that you know and then I hear my dad said ⁓ found the flag and yeah he found the flag and you can see these old cuts you know like with little hand saws so the ends of the these bushes and twigs and all there's are brought black and brown just

The State I Am In (33:16)
Yeah. Okay.

Tyler (33:33)
long cut long ago, but it didn't overgrow because I guess there's not a lot of nutrition for that to grow right there, except for little creek. And it's actually it's kind of like a, like an orchard like little trail going through there for a small bit. So you go through there. So my dad goes through, I follow him about 10 yards at this time behind him. He pops on their side and on, he starts going up this little hill. It's not a huge hill, right?

The State I Am In (33:39)
Yeah.

Tyler (34:02)
and he gets to the top and I get out of those bushes and I take about five steps and I remember thinking I like I looked at the time stamp on my phone the other day and I thought it was two o'clock but the time stamp since it was it was said it was three o'clock and we haven't had any lunch I'm thinking about top ramen right and you're if you're out hunting you're you know how

hard that top ramen hits. It is amazing. Little chalula sauce, you know, I'm thinking like cut up a summer sausage. I got my like a little pilot bread. I'm thinking about my backpack. I mean, I'm thinking actually this is a perfect spot to sit. And my dad gets to the top of that hill. starts going over a little bit. So he's just get out of range. I'm coming up this hill. And at that moment, in this little arena like area with taller grass.

taller golden grass. There is a...

Well, first my dad, he says bear, he screams it. says bear. You know, and immediately I'm now sent out of my trance of delicious top ramen, warm top ramen, right? Like what'd he just say? You know, and you know how meditative the hiking state is, right? No matter how experienced you are in hunting, hiking, I always tell people like every 10 paces, yell, talk. And my dad and I were kind of chatting, but.

The State I Am In (35:18)
Yeah.

Tyler (35:34)
You know, we weren't bear aware at that time because we were just, we were stuck in the moment, right? We're meditative. And my dad screams bear because he must have looked over and just heard a crunch. But after he said bear.

The State I Am In (35:37)
Yeah.

Tyler (35:52)
There was this like guttural just like it was it was the most frightening sound I've ever heard. And it was an instant sound of attack. That's all it was. It was it was an instant decision. And it just happened just like that. And.

The State I Am In (36:17)
Reaction

Tyler (36:20)
I'm still processing what's going on. hear these bushes just snap, just like I said, you had a hard time getting, we would have the hardest time. Nothing. was like nothing. She must've just been like in the middle of it and just hanging out there by the creek 15 yards away from us. We just walked up on her and she charges my father and you can hear the like, and then you just see this golden hump.

like kind of cresting the this this grass and I'm still processing what's going on. You know, you have, have you ever had that moment where you like your buddy just jumps out and goes rawr and you're like, ⁓ you like the shivers or you turn around trying to punch him, you know, like that's that's what you have. You have just like them. You have a reaction, right? You have fight, flight.

The State I Am In (36:57)
Yeah.

Yeah, that reactive like, yeah.

Tyler (37:20)
And in these situations you have freeze, right? And I froze for just a second. Like, what is that? I knew what it was, but I couldn't really, I didn't want to know what it was, right? Like, ugh. And, you know, have you ever, like, when you're out hiking, you always think about, like, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do when that moment happens?

The State I Am In (37:36)
Yeah, here's like, go processing what is actually happening. Yeah.

Totally, you played this scenario game. Yeah, for sure.

Tyler (37:53)
feel like every man that goes out there with a stick like I can take a bear no you can't trust me you can't some guy in Austin here was like I can take a black bear I was like buddy I would love to watch that just for saying that anyways so

The State I Am In (37:59)
You

Yeah. Yeah.

Tyler (38:13)
That processing is happening, that bear is just moving. It's hard to explain how fast these animals move. Towards my father, and he starts turning his back. Because it's already in his mind, and he's been around bears his whole life. Not his whole life, but as a game warden, his whole life as a game warden. So many stories of bears and his encounters. And he knows...

The State I Am In (38:34)
Totally.

Tyler (38:43)
he has to turn his back and get down on his stomach because that's what you do, right? If they are going to bowl you over, you have no chance on hell to react to anything. You get on your stomach, you have your backpack on your back, right? And you lay down and hopefully that backpack protects the back of your head, the back of your neck. And he also has a Glock 40 on his chest. So he starts turning and he's yelling, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

that bear and that's when I get that look, I see her and I realize that's a grizzly bear, brown bear, whatever you want to call it from wherever she's at. I don't know what the miles away from the coast is. Anyways, so that's when I see that bear and I have a 10 millimeter on my hip. My father gave me a ⁓ holster.

that is a police holster right has a strap going over the back of it and you have to press it down push it forward and and that was just an extra step i did not put into my calculations i reacted to her running at me and all i and because she pivoted right when she got to my father just like that split second she pivoted and she went straight at me she put her head down and maybe her head was already down

I honestly, it's so hard to remember these things because in these moments it's like the beginning of a Marvel movie where it's just flipping those pictures. Flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip. And I have these just images of this bear head down. My hand goes to my gun. I turn kind of my left shoulder towards her and I take that right foot back and I try to pull my 10 millimeter out of my holster.

The State I Am In (40:21)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tyler (40:39)
And that strap is there. My thumb slipped right off of that. So from the time I heard a crash, from the time that now her snout is in front of me, it was probably about four seconds. I had to react. And the...

The State I Am In (40:42)
Hmm.

Yes.

Tyler (41:01)
I just like...

Man.

Dude, they are fast.

The State I Am In (41:09)
Yeah.

Tyler (41:11)
And she... Yeah.

The State I Am In (41:11)
can imagine that she, her

mind, your dad was in check and you were the only threat left. And so she turned in a hurry at you.

Tyler (41:18)
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And I, yeah.

Yeah, I, to her, was a threat because she saw my dad, checked him and realized I probably came out of the path that she came in and now she's trapped. Like I said, this area is like an arena. And she, like, I just remember, like paws up and she slaps me down.

I have a ⁓ external frame backpack and she hit that backpack and then she goes across my shoulder and just fucking just my legs go over my my head. And at that time I ripped my gun out of my holster and I was falling backwards, like throwing backwards with her coming on top of me. And I just I just now like a couple of months ago remembered. Put in a hole through my leg.

The State I Am In (42:03)
Yeah.

Tyler (42:15)
And I got it from when I was working out from this like rush that I got it because I got lightheaded or just got cold real quick. And when I was at the gym and that was the same feeling, it's just like this cold rush. And that memory just snapped back at me. And I remember I was falling backwards and I tried like, I don't know if I was trying to kick her away at the same time as falling backwards, but I put my 10 millimeter rate to my left thigh and I pulled the trigger in the frant, just franted, boom, put a hole right through my leg.

The State I Am In (42:42)
Hmm.

Tyler (42:43)
I fell backwards, was falling backwards. She got me in my, she got me in my right calf. She bit down on it and I started putting bullets into her chest. And I got a claw mark on my right hip too as she might've, she must've pulled, like yanked me in and this just is all happening all at once. And as she's on top of me, I put a bullet in her chest and my legs let go.

and she's on top of me and she has a collar. She was, she was, she was, she was tagged already by Fish and Game. And I remember, I like, I remember thinking, it's like a red, I just, I remember thinking red, orange, yellow color. And I was like, oh, she's tagged. In my head, I'm thinking this. And also I'm thinking, shoot.

The State I Am In (43:18)
Like she was tagged already, like by fishing game or something like that.

day.

Tyler (43:39)
just I'm just pulling the trigger as fast as I can as she's on top of me. And just like the way the only way you could have saw that caller was if I was on my back and she was on top of you looking up and I was just pulling the trigger as fast as I can. Now my dad wasn't just sitting there right he wasn't just watching this happen. Well he was but he wasn't not doing anything. At this time when I'm on my back pulling the trigger shooting upwards.

The State I Am In (43:52)
Yeah, dude.

Tyler (44:09)
My dad rounds the corner around so he's not shooting straight at me. So he doesn't shoot through the bear into his own son. The wherewithal of this man to think of because of the training he's been through. And he just saw his son absolutely get a linebacker smashed by a 500 pound grizzly bear down a hill. He comes around and he starts pulling the trigger and shooting broadside, head, neck, head, neck, and she falls off of me.

The State I Am In (44:14)
Mm-hmm.

Smart. Yeah. Totally.

Tyler (44:39)
And now she's down next to me. She is literally, I'm sitting here and I can, I could pat her on the side of the head. I don't want to cause now my dad's just putting holes in her head, right? Really making sure that she's not going to keep on attacking me. And the dust settles and that the whole, everything is done within 12 seconds. You gotta think it's like 12 seconds.

The State I Am In (44:53)
Yeah.

Yeah

Tyler (45:09)
And now I have a grizzly bear sitting next to me, just laying there. And my father, now he's, he immediately, I remember he immediately just went reload. He just reloaded another, right? I looked down and it's like, shit. I was like, I shot myself. His dad, I think I shot myself. And I looked down at my leg, sure shit, right through my army surplus.

⁓ Cargo pants there's a hole and I just rip it open There was gunpowder just black you'll see in the video. This is I pull my camera out right after this And there was a black residue and a hole and I didn't because I still had the pants on I didn't see no exit wounds. ⁓ I there's so much adrenaline going through him at this point and I immediately trauma kits my backpack Trauma kits in my backpack

The State I Am In (45:49)
Hmm.

Tyler (46:07)
I was a hot shot on Pioneer Peak for two years and I just remember like, always carry a trauma kit with you. That was something like going to the VMT class, you know, it's just bring that trauma kit with you. Rather have it, not need it, need it, not have it, right? Always over-prepared, just a little bit. And ⁓ I grabbed the trauma shears out of there, cut my pants open.

The State I Am In (46:16)
Right. Yep.

Yeah.

Tyler (46:36)
bullet holes right there, pulled out the quick clot. So the newer quick clot actually I was I remember you know, like I said, I was a hotshot on Pioneer Peak and we we would go through you know, yeah, open it up look away so that quick clot doesn't blow into your face. Right? This quick clot had it was a bandage. And it had like a brick on it. You wrap it around your leg. And I don't know what possessed me. But before I left my house, there was a slingshot.

The State I Am In (46:51)
Yeah.

Tyler (47:05)
rubber slingshot and I don't know why I said I better bring the slingshot you know rubber thing just in case I need a tourniquet well yeah use it you know wrap that around right above that wound squeezed it down then we found out that's when that exa wound is right there just beep-boop right through one of them million dollar wound man just yep it went straight through my leg right through the meat

The State I Am In (47:13)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Tyler (47:32)
It missed my arteries, it missed my femur, it missed my kneecap. Just above the knee, right? you look at your kneecap, you go about six inches up, and that's about where I went through. Then you go to side of your knee on the outside and you go about four inches and you just go straight through that meat right there. Missed everything except for now I have a weird indent in my quad. Cool indent. Yeah, well, look at that. That's where I shot myself. ⁓

The State I Am In (47:35)
Is this above the knee? Okay.

Yeah, little meat missing.

Tyler (48:02)
Whoops and ⁓ That's when I started doing triage on my body right I disassociated myself with my body immediately. I'm like, okay now what's what now what happened and this is just just Going through the motions right my dad starts going through the motions with me. I remember looking at him like I'm okay I'm good. I am good and ⁓ Well, he's like your boots filling up with blood. I'm like, ⁓ maybe I'm not good

That's right. She bit me. Shit. So in my leg, I mean, my, I'm holding up my leg and my foot, I'm just like dangling. Like, it's not like hanging out, but it's just like, what's that? That's my right leg. Yeah. It's just like, I just, it just feels like not there. And my pants are shredded. And it's just like the green cargo is now like this deep brown and I have a tan.

The State I Am In (48:31)
⁓ yeah.

This is the other leg. This is the other leg.

Tyler (48:59)
hiking boots and they're just blood. I'm like, shit. that's actually I was like, ⁓ what? ⁓ that's not good. That's not good at all. I remember saying I was like, Ooh, no, no. All right, rip it open. And yeah, I can't see anything because it's just blood. Okay. So my dad grabs the tourniquet. The one that has a metal bar in actual tourniquet, not a rubber band, right? And he just

The State I Am In (49:10)
Yeah.

Tyler (49:28)
He puts that on there and well, he tightens it up and he looks at me. He's like, how tight is that good? I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's good. That's good. And he goes, ⁓ okay. And just gives them that other like a little bit, you know, I don't want, yeah. That's that's a, that's a new sensation. And it's

The State I Am In (49:43)
Yes. Yeah. Good man.

Good man.

So I've been a medic in the guard for a long time, 10 years. And that's how you put on a tourniquet is you freaking crank that sucker down until you're confident there's no circulation going down anymore. That is awesome. Kudos to you having the medical kit, the trauma kit to begin with and then knowing how to use it like competently. Yeah.

Good job for you and your dad.

Tyler (50:21)
Yeah, I mean, if you have any questions about anything before I proceed, go go right ahead. I know I just kind of like spatted that whole thing at you.

The State I Am In (50:28)
No dude, I'm

tagging along, I'm right there with you. This is, it's wild. Yeah, go ahead.

Tyler (50:34)
⁓ well, so I, that's, actually, pull out my camera as my, take up, that's when I take the picture of my dad. ⁓ right there after we get the tourniquet on, ⁓ we have gauze and stuff wrapped around my leg. I think we tried cleaning it off and, I still have so much adrenaline through my body. I have no clue. I have a gash through my hip at this time. It wasn't for a while. I realized that till the adrenaline started wearing off.

The State I Am In (51:02)
Yeah

Tyler (51:03)
And I started, I take my camera out and I start videotaping. And to me, videotaping makes me feel calm. That's just my way of, I talk to myself. I love taking videos of just beautiful scenes, just anything, you know, I always have my camera videotaping something. I just find so much joy in that it's calming. So I pull my camera out.

And I started videotaping and talking to the camera. said, Hey, we have a grizzly bear here. And the thing's just laying right next to me. And I explain what happened and what's going on. And I remember like, you know, and then she's busted through and she got on top of me and I was like, you know, I started loading like a motherfucker on top of her, but I was underneath her, but I was just fucking going, you know, and.

Pan over I'm like, yeah, and I shot myself You know, there's that And later just just a couple seconds and this this is if you when you watch the video, this is about six minutes after I mean, like I said, we went straight into Triage well secure the perimeter my father secure the perimeter He started yelling hey bear, you know looking for if there's another one that's happened to him before he's got charged by one bear and there's another one right after that

The State I Am In (52:07)
Yeah

Tyler (52:30)
So he went, dude, he was a machine, man. Just all that training and I gotta witness it. Like I said, best partner to have out there is sewn with that training. And.

The State I Am In (52:38)
Yeah. Yeah. 100%.

Tyler (52:45)
So I start videotaping and I just remember like, gotta keep my heart rate down. And I said that in the video. It's like, keep your heart rate down. Your blood is flowing right now. Your heart rate going, well, that means you're gonna lose more blood. I don't wanna lose more blood, so, coups for bra, you know? Cuna matata, brother. And, you know, so try to keep calm. You're bleeding out your legs, but cuna matata.

The State I Am In (53:12)
For worse, yeah.

However to keep yourself, doing whatever to keep yourself chilled out.

Tyler (53:18)
Yeah, I just remember like in the video, I'm like, yeah, it's a beautiful day. I even give a description of how the bear was on top of me like Gimli in Lord of the Rings when the war dies and it just falls. He's like, right. Like, so it was and in these videos, you can see, you can see how I'm trying to be calm the situation and then my father just the way we work together was like

The State I Am In (53:32)
Yeah. Yeah.

Tyler (53:43)
It was like it was just already in act like we knew exactly what to do. We kept each other calm, right? That was big. That was big. There was there was moments where I mean, my my dad put it on the tourniquet. He put it on backwards once or twice. I'm like, hey, man, we're good. He's like, you know what? Yeah, he saw how I'm calm. I saw how he's calm. And later he stood in front of me and kept that son out of me. you know, there's some moments where that adrenalines wearing off and he's like, you're good.

The State I Am In (53:49)
You guys are insane. Yeah.

Tyler (54:13)
You're good, man. I was like, yeah, I'm good. Here, have some water. We ran out of water pretty quick, though. That was dumb. And you can see in the videos, my dad has his inReach. And it's so cool. So this is not the first time we use the inReach, unfortunately. But he's trained in this stuff, right? So he goes on search and rescues. He knows the language, how to give information with the...

just because I think you only can do a certain amount of characters on these enriches, you know, a Texas satellite device for the ones that don't know what that is super handy to have. Or you can have the iPhone 17 now, which is pretty dope. That's what I got because of all this. ⁓ And he's saying my son attacked by grizzly bear ⁓ bullet hole wound control bleeding stable need a medevac just over and over and over again. He might've had a couple other things in there that

The State I Am In (54:48)
Yeah.

Tyler (55:12)
that they needed, coordinates. And he sent it out to, obviously he has a connection. he, I think he texted someone or messaged someone that he knew that could help. ⁓ I think it was the troopers he got a hold of and potentially the, I know RCC, they spun up. And it's like the troopers came as contingency, but the troopers ended up coming before RCC, which missed out on that Black Hawk ride. Dang it.

The State I Am In (55:39)
Bye.

Tyler (55:41)
yeah and it was

Two and a half hours, which everyone's like, wow, that's a long time. I'm like, no, not really, because it could have not been two and a half hours. And I could have had to try to walk out of there, which I don't know. mean, have a tourniquet and bullet hole wound. I'm pretty tough. That's pretty rough. There was a moment about 45 minutes in when the adrenaline started wearing off. We started hearing a thop.

and there's a helicopter went right by wasn't for us though no come back you know so I just my dad he he tried his best to ⁓ keep my mind off of things so he asked me you know hey he loves I'm a storyteller and the fun story before this bear attack

The State I Am In (56:22)
Hmm.

Tyler (56:47)
which this bear attack wasn't that fun, was on Adak when I saved my dad on Adak. And he loves when I tell the story, because I love storytelling, right? So he's like, yeah, why don't you tell that time you saved me on Adak? I'm like, okay, yeah. And I got about two minutes in, I said, nope. I'm flipping from one side to the other, and then that's, I'm like, ooh, I have some pouches in my pocket. Like some Teeza pouches, they're non-nicotine tea pouches.

The State I Am In (57:14)
Okay.

Tyler (57:15)
You know, and I remember going in there and I'm in my side pouch and pull it out and almost like a like a cartoon, you know, there's a claw mark going right through it and it's just all of it just dumps out. I'm like, damn. And then I was like, wait a second. Why is there a claw mark going through my tin? And I look over and I pull my pant leg up is like, no shit. I couldn't lay on my side. I was uncomfortable because they're freaking gash my leg, man.

The State I Am In (57:37)
Yeah.

No.

Tyler (57:45)
And I was like, Hey dad, I have another wound. And he's like, what? And so he gave me his bandana and I just kind of like shoved it in there. And then I gashed, just shoved the bandana in the gash. And, um, after that I laid on my stomach and I just listened to music over and over again. And, uh, the same song, the same song, just, just waiting for the medevac and I put on this Norwegian song, just very primal.

The State I Am In (57:48)
Yeah

This is waiting for basically your med pack.

Tyler (58:15)
I really like that kind of stuff and just just listen to that and the bear because I was on my stomach was probably I mean it was this far away from my face so I spent the next hour and half two hours staring at this bear with a bolt through the side of the face and just blood coming out of it not just looking at her the whole time and ⁓

The State I Am In (58:34)
to

Tyler (58:43)
Yeah, it. My dad did this thing when I I used to run with him when I was a kid and we did this. ⁓ Special Olympics run thing or torch run for the Special Olympics in Seward and is a 5K and he did this thing where it's like, it's just around the corner, buddy. Just keep on going. Well, he did that same shit to me because he was like, no, they're going to be here in a half hour. So you know what I did? I was like, OK, yeah, yeah.

The State I Am In (59:05)
Yeah.

Tyler (59:13)
Put that half hour on my phone and watch that thing tick down just like you're in class like tick tick tick. Well, he lied. Two hours later, Joe, Joe, the trooper, he he came out of the helicopter and I had this whole idea. I was going to videotape the helicopter coming in. You know, it'd be so cool. But I was like, I ain't moving. I didn't even pick my head up. I was like, get me the frick out of here, dude. And Joe came over and

The State I Am In (59:17)
Yeah.

Two hours later.

Yeah.

Tyler (59:43)
My dad and I tried to drag me or my dad and him try to drag me out. ⁓ And then Joe just grabbed me from the shoulders and that guy just yarded me out of there. It's just a beast of a dude. Just I'm not a small guy, man. I'm like 200 pounds, right? And he start dragging me through and I'm just like, this sucks. And I get dragged through the creek and I remember it was like, that felt good. And I'm out of the creek and that sucks. And I'm slain there by the helicopter.

of propellers going, the pilot. I can see him, looks down, he's like, yeah, you're good. I'm like, oh yeah, for sure, I'm good, man. And I can hear them talking, Joe and my dad, and they're like, should he wait here for the PJs to come, the pair of jumpers? because they're like, that's it, I literally.

The State I Am In (1:00:33)
Yeah. Get me the hell out of here now.

Tyler (1:00:39)
I heard that and I grabbed onto the skid and I started climbing in the helicopter. like, no, he wants to go. Yeah. So he pulled me in there. Oh, I pulled myself in there and maybe a little push in the butt to get me in and I laid down and I've been in helicopters when I was on the hotshots, like we're in and out, in and out of the helicopters constantly. Um, that was the worst helicopter ride, but the best helicopter ride.

The State I Am In (1:00:46)
We're going down. Yeah.

Tyler (1:01:07)
I've just like the bumps, every bump, I'm like, ⁓ shh, ⁓ But it was so, so beautiful, man. Just, you're flying, like it's just across from Anchorage, you know? You got hope over there, because this trail, Resurrection, goes from sewer to hope. And it's just the most beautiful area back there. Like, go out there, dude. Go hiking out there. Be bear, bareware.

The State I Am In (1:01:09)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah, okay.

I'll be very aware.

Tyler (1:01:35)
Be bear aware, but go hiking out there. But go out there. Yeah, ⁓ I got to the hospital and ⁓ the doctors, they were told that there's a ⁓ bear ⁓ victim and a gunshot wound at the same time. And I'm sure that they imagined some guy like, God, help me. And I got in and I can't remember what joke I said. I said something, they were like.

The State I Am In (1:01:37)
Go out there. Will do.

Tyler (1:02:06)
Yeah, what the hell's up with this guy? But when they turned that, they... No, it wasn't.

The State I Am In (1:02:10)
Not what they're expecting. I will tell you,

being on the other side of that call, when you get the heads up, you're working in the ER, and you're like, hey, got a baremalling coming in, or we got a GSW coming in, you start to like, oh, what are the details? And then you start kind of building this scenario in your head of what's going to come through the doors. So it's kind of funny to think that, okay.

Tyler (1:02:27)
Mm-hmm.

The State I Am In (1:02:34)
bear, okay, bear mauling and gunshot? Like was this bear armed? Like what's going on?

Tyler (1:02:38)
Yeah Dude

that I wouldn't you know what if a bear was armed with a gun that's game over dude alright. I'll stick inside that sure Yeah

The State I Am In (1:02:48)
We've lost for the weaker species. ⁓

But also, I will say, when you build up that scenario and you're always thinking the worst, when you're on the other side, you're always prepared for like the worst possible scenario of what's coming through the door. There is some levity when what comes through the door is like, ⁓ OK, this guy's joking with me. He's conscious. He's alert. He's, you know, applied some basic first aid. Bleeding is controlled. Then like the, you know, you're

Tyler (1:03:11)
Mm-hmm.

The State I Am In (1:03:17)
your guard kind of gets lowered a little bit at least, from what you're expecting. And so I'm sure it was probably a breath of fresh air when you come in joking through the door with the ER staff, but go ahead, you can continue.

Tyler (1:03:20)
Mm-hmm. Right.

⁓ Yeah, I get in there and you know

gunshot I felt like someone punched me in the leg really hard like gave you that good charlie horse that just didn't go away ⁓ it must have cauterized it all the way through just the nerves are just gone yeah I actually I lost feeling inside my leg right here and ⁓ that tourniquet

The State I Am In (1:03:43)
Mm.

Tyler (1:03:58)
That tourniquet was the most painful thing. Maybe because it like numbed by my leg, but it wasn't numb. It felt like it was on fire and it was about to explode. And it was just like, I remember thinking, was like, just, you're just silly. But I was like, cut my leg off, you know, in my head. But it's like, no, I want it actually, keep it. But they took that thing off and I was like, but I was worried. Maybe I don't know why this came to my head, but I was like,

The State I Am In (1:04:07)
Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tyler (1:04:28)
remember asking the doctor, was like, if they take that tourniquet off, is like all the dead blood going to go up to my heart and kill me. And he's like, is that something? don't, he said, no, I don't know if that's something that's taught.

The State I Am In (1:04:33)
Hmm.

Yeah, there is a timeframe associated with it. The military, teach us it's like after four hours, ⁓ if you have a tourniquet on after four hours, there is kind of a strategic way to do it so that you don't, you're not releasing all of this, it's not toxic, but there's a wrong way to do it, I'll say.

It sounds like you might've been within that four hour, six hour timeframe. I can't remember if it's four or six, ⁓ to where there could be some significant nerve damage, some shock involved, stuff like that. So yeah, could be a little sketchy for sure.

Tyler (1:05:18)
I didn't know. So I was like, survive the bear die for my own blood. Damn it. Shoot. No, not like this. ⁓ Yeah. So that's I mean, after that, I got my calls from my wife that was I was I was actually getting questioned by a trooper and again and another game warden because my dad was actually still back. He was still back there. And the RCC picked him up. Actually, the

The State I Am In (1:05:22)
Yeah, what a way to go. Yeah.

Okay,

good.

Tyler (1:05:47)
the

paratroopers and the blackhawks so he got the cool ride ⁓ yeah that would suck ⁓ you don't need it all right right let's go boys you get water yeah water bud here there you go enjoy that yeah no he took a ride back with the helicopter and ⁓

The State I Am In (1:05:50)
Cool, I was gonna say that would be a lonely walk back if they just left him out there.

Yeah.

You're good. You're good though. You still got your ramen. Yeah.

Tyler (1:06:16)
Yeah, I was getting interviewed by another trooper and stuff. And that's when the phone, the wife phone came in. It was my wife and that was, that was an emotional thing. It was great hearing her. what she had to go through was probably hell. Cause all she knew, she got a text from my, my step-grand, my step mom was like, Hey, ⁓ Tyler got mauled by a bear. She's in Texas with my son, with nobody. And he's just like, yeah, he got mauled by a bear.

The State I Am In (1:06:39)
Yeah, not even close. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Tyler (1:06:46)
That's it.

The State I Am In (1:06:48)
What do with that?

Tyler (1:06:50)
more information for her please next time yeah that's other than that it was just you know it was recovery yeah I actually I recovered really fast

The State I Am In (1:07:07)
You didn't need surgery or anything crazy like that? Were you able to be discharged from the ER? Did you have to stay the night in the hospital as an inpatient or anything like that?

Tyler (1:07:15)
Nope, think I left from because of good behavior. They let me go.

The State I Am In (1:07:21)
No

Tyler (1:07:23)
You know, they're like, this guy's get him out of here. This joker here, you know, and so I crushed on out. Yeah. And they, know, you can't get stitches when you got a bear bite because they have so much bacteria in their mouth that you got to leave it open. And so it has to heal from the inside out. So that was pretty nasty for a while. ⁓ But I, went to the wound clinic and they're like, dude, you're healing crazy. They try to put silver, these little silver pouches in there or patches and supposedly it's supposed to help with bacteria.

The State I Am In (1:07:23)
That's good. Yeah.

Peace, time.

Tyler (1:07:53)
But I guess I got, since I got bit by the bear, I turned into a werebear, because now I got like allergic to silver. ⁓ Yeah, I'm allergic to silver. Apparently, they're shoving these things in there. I'm like, no, that burns. They're like, what? That's not supposed to. I'm like, yeah, no, get that out. And yeah, werebear. So yeah, and I like they're like, you're healing like crazy. Like the bullet hole wound was already they the first time I went there, they could shove that q tip all the way through.

The State I Am In (1:08:00)
What?

That's gonna be the title of this episode, Tyler Johnson, Were Bear.

⁓

Hmm.

Tyler (1:08:24)
And then the

second time it stopped already, ⁓ which is like a day, two days later, something like that. So I was, was healing real fast and they, they said something about, I don't know, I don't know, it's potassium or some medical thing. They're like, yeah, you got this. And this is how they can tell how fast you can heal and you got a lot of it. So you're healthy. I'm like, sweet. So I, I, I'm pretty lucky.

The State I Am In (1:08:27)
Sweet.

Nice. Dude, so much to unpack there. ⁓

I mean, the fact that what you experienced.

was with your dad, it couldn't have been a better scenario. I mean, it sucks for sure, but you know, the way that you were able to respond, that you you played the scenario game, I totally know what you're talking about when you go out into the woods and you think about like, this is what I'm gonna do. And I don't wanna say every man thinks that, but like, it is fun to play that game because you wanna be prepared in those moments.

Tyler (1:09:19)
Mm-hmm.

The State I Am In (1:09:30)
And so you reacted based off of, you know, in those just few 12 seconds, you know, of what you had already mapped out in your own head and then dealing with like the curve balls of like, okay, bears on top of me, unholstering my weapon, shoot myself in the leg. Now, okay, I still have to, shot myself, but I still got to like get this bear off me and then, you know, defend myself against that and, you know, to your dad's response.

and having the wherewithal not to just unload directly in front of him with you underneath, like that was so smart. You know, to get in the right position to be able to dispatch this bear. then the whole triage thing, like having, again, the wherewithal to like, okay, check myself. ⁓ Having the right equipment on hand to be able to deal with that.

And then, you know, having the, you know, like the...

the sat phone, why am I blanking on the name of it right now? Yeah, having the inReach handy to be able, because then it's like, okay, what happens if that happens and you guys don't have that? Do you have cell service? Now, if you didn't have that, now you're forced to be in a position of like, okay, well now we got to figure out how to get back and like that delays the timeframe. Who knows, maybe it goes beyond that four to six hours and now you do have to lose your leg for having to tourniquet on for,

Tyler (1:10:33)
⁓ it's the in reach. Yeah. Yeah.

The State I Am In (1:10:59)
so long, it could have been so much different. And I'm glad it turned out the way it did for your sake, again, even though it sucked that it did turn out well. It's interesting. One of the things that came to my mind while you're talking about, and this happens a lot is in the medical world they call them distracting injuries.

So someone comes in and you see something and it's like really gnarly and gross. You're like, we got to deal with that. And it sounds like that's what happened between your gunshot wound and where the bear had jacked up your leg. Meanwhile, you have this giant gash on your hip that you didn't even know about. Because of all the adrenaline and everything going on, ⁓ it's really hard to assess all of that accurately. so good job for being able to...

Tyler (1:11:26)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

The State I Am In (1:11:50)
kind of check all those boxes and kind of stop the immediate life threats so that you had the best opportunity to get out of there. And thankfully, no major arteries were hit, you had the right equipment ⁓ and you had someone else out there. you weren't by yourself. ⁓ Man, crazy, crazy experience for sure.

Tyler (1:12:05)
Somehow.

Yeah.

The State I Am In (1:12:21)
⁓ After you got out of the hospital, like you'd said, you'd just moved to Austin. Did you hang out in Alaska for a little bit or did you, like for the wound care and all that, or did you take care of that in Austin?

Tyler (1:12:36)
So I stayed in Alaska for two weeks after that. ⁓ My in-laws, they live right next to Thunderbird Falls. ⁓ And this is actually, it was August 17th, so the state fair was going on at this time too. My sister, has a store there at the ⁓ state fair. The Dillicious Pickles. Shout out to my sister. ⁓

The State I Am In (1:13:01)
Okay.

Sweet. Deligit pickles.

Tyler (1:13:06)
Yeah, the hottest pickles in the coldest state. She sells a lot of pickles there. ⁓ Delicious. And I was there for about two weeks and I was getting interviewed by Meat Eaters and the Inside Edition, Alaska News Source did a bit with me. That was great. Those guys are amazing. ⁓

And I just had all these experiences. It was so crazy. Just everyone just reach out like what happened? You know, that's the story went all the way to the UK and Australia. It was just like what's going on? And they they saw my video and it went viral all over. Joe Rogan retweeted the video. The guy that the guy that does Red Zone NFL in the red zone. He's like commenting on like this guy's.

The State I Am In (1:13:37)
Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah, crazy.

Tyler (1:13:57)
You have to I don't care. Remember he said it was something awesome. I was like sweet I Watch you, you know ⁓ You know with all the good comments there was ⁓ the yeah the other side the the others

The State I Am In (1:14:04)
Thanks, sir.

⁓ yeah, there's gotta be.

People are the worst.

Tyler (1:14:17)
People don't know man. That's all it is. Like I can't get mad at them. I'm not mad at them They can be mad at me all they want they don't know and and that's what you got to realize is like People are on their own world they're doing their own thing and they have their own point of view and sometimes they just have a lack of ⁓ Knowledge on certain situations and they make up their own story and that's fine

The State I Am In (1:14:19)
Yeah.

Tyler (1:14:45)
That is fine. I know in my heart what happened and how much love I have for just being out in the wild and respect. dude, I bring a gun. I brought a gun out with me, know, and it is for that situation, right? ⁓

You know, I never thought it would happen, but it's just there. Some people just bring a gun to feel safe. Typically just yelling, making noise is all you need. But like I said, sometimes that just doesn't happen. ⁓ And I didn't want to shoot her. I wasn't, like I said.

Even if there was a wolf there and we were out hunting, I didn't want to shoot it because I wasn't hunting for that. I wasn't going to eat it. I wasn't going to be used to that. There's no use killing her. Right? What happened to me? I didn't want to do it. I didn't fight. I shot myself first. Damn it. You know, like chill out.

The State I Am In (1:15:46)
You can always hold that over that argument. Hey, look, I shot myself first, okay?

Tyler (1:15:52)
I gave her a chance, all right?

The State I Am In (1:15:54)
So are you

saying that people were like upset that you killed this bear in self-defense?

Tyler (1:15:58)
⁓ dude, I got some threats, brother. Yo, dude. Actually, there was a point where I was like, hope I, like, my address, like these people were saying some crazy stuff. If you go to my video on YouTube, there's one that has a couple million views. There's TikTok blew up to like,

The State I Am In (1:16:02)
What?

Tyler (1:16:21)
Twitter did seven million views, so many comments, whatever. That was months ago, I haven't checked. But the stuff man, they would say, the stuff people say behind hiding behind glasses. It's bonkers. Honestly, it just got kind of comical after a while. I'm like, yeah, that's creative. That is really creative. Man, who kicked you in the nuts this morning, buddy? Like, bro, chill. know? But.

The State I Am In (1:16:24)
Thanks.

Hmm.

Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

Tyler (1:16:48)
There's also the other side, right? There's also the other side that our people are willing to learn, got curious about it. Like, what did you do? How did you do that? What happened? Why did she react? What did you have? That's what I love. That's easier. This is a teaching moment. This is an experience that can't be wasted. Not everyone gets to go through this. Not everyone gets to live through this. So, you know, ⁓

The State I Am In (1:17:07)
Right.

Totally. Yep.

Tyler (1:17:17)
It's a it was all around a life changing experience that I'm grateful to have. But I am also just there's that I didn't want to kill her. Right. So she had cubs. That's I don't think I mentioned that there's a reason why she attacked. We surprised her. You know, she disengaged for my father, you got to keep in mind, she, she left. She's like, nope. Okay, so she saw my dad human.

No, I don't want to mess. Oh, there's another one. You guys are trapping me and my cubs. So there's I ended up killing a sow and three cubs. I didn't didn't shoot them, but they were young. Right. And we were told this later because they they had to get the collar and they were tracking her. Yeah. She was 18 years old.

The State I Am In (1:17:49)
Yeah.

Dang.

Tyler (1:18:12)
She's a she was she yeah I mean that's a relatively old grizzly bear come to find out I've been doing a lot of research on bears recently but yeah ⁓ beautiful bear I mean I remember looking at it God you're so beautiful she was ⁓ didn't want to do that I don't want to do that so that's that's something that I

The State I Am In (1:18:14)
Seems like an old girl.

Tyler (1:18:41)
I think about and...

You know, yeah, something to think about.

The State I Am In (1:18:45)
Yeah, it's

hard to... ⁓

to take all of your experience and try to quantify that to the smart ass comment on Twitter. It's like, is it even worth your time? And maybe that's a point that you reached that there's some people aren't going to understand unless they're in that same position. And it's hard to be able to say what...

Tyler (1:19:12)
Hmm.

The State I Am In (1:19:19)
any given person's response is going to be. And even like, you know, we were talking about earlier is you think you know what your response is going to be in that moment. And even then there's only so much that can prepare you for when it actually happens. Because sometimes it's hard to fight physiology, you know, what you're going to do reactively in the moment. And especially with what, you know, what that bear was doing, it's like...

Tyler (1:19:27)
Yeah.

The State I Am In (1:19:47)
it does kind of seem that way having, two threats in vicinity of her cubs, like it's kind of game on for her. It wasn't just like a stunt. wasn't a, like this was a close encounter that, you know, she was obviously escalating to the point of attacking you. And so, yeah, man, it's gotta be to be in the national.

know, worldwide spotlight for something like that. I know it's gotta be like a good thing and maybe even an equally like heavy thing to kind of carry because you can't justify every or you can't appease every person that's coming at you. I'm sure there's a million different angles people are coming at you of like, did you work on your ⁓ unholstering technique enough before you went out into the woods? Did you?

Tyler (1:20:37)
Dude.

The State I Am In (1:20:39)
⁓ Why didn't you have this specific kind of tourniquet or, ⁓ were you wearing bells when you were out there? Like, I'm sure there's like every weird niche like piece of advice out there was thrown at you. so, but nobody knows except the person that was out there doing it. And that's gotta be the hardest part. Cause you can't, you can't, it's not even worth your time when it's that magnified.

Tyler (1:20:43)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

You gotta be able to ⁓ separate these people that... I got a witness here. These people around here, probably some of these, neighbors might have been in the comments, right? They don't know the life that we live in Alaska. It is so much different. It's amazing. I wanna share it with you.

You don't want to listen, that's fine. But you know what? I will share something with people that are willing to listen, that do want to learn from this. Those are the ones that I'm paying attention to. Because they want to learn something, I want to learn something. I was like, we can, we could do something with this experience. Right? And that's, I just focus on that. I focus on those that are wanting to learn, wanting to hear that, that actually have gratitude towards this type of experience and

That's the stuff I love. yeah, the attention, it was whatever it was, right? ⁓ It is fairly awesome, honestly, to get that attention and...

That little validation that, like, you know what, buddy, you did do good out there. You know, I gotta let myself know, like, yeah, that was a fucked up situation. But we did good. My father and I did fantastic in that situation. We were presented a situation where we had to react. We had to. There was no other choice. It was either...

me or the bear. I have a cub at home. I have a wife at home. I am going to fight for my life, for my family. My father has a son right next to him. He's going to fight for his cub I'm a grizzly now, but whatever. Right. It's the same. It's, it's the same thing with her too. She did the same thing. She did the same thing.

The State I Am In (1:23:12)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler (1:23:16)
I don't know how I mean you can call a luck or whatever. I could have died from the bullet. I could have died from bleeding out. I could have died from is she actually if by the way. Yeah, she fell off of me with the seventh round. I broke her spine fell off like right there right here. I don't know. Have you have you hunted for bears or anything before?

The State I Am In (1:23:42)
No, no, not a bear hunter, small game, but no.

Tyler (1:23:46)
Well, small game still. I mean, if you shoot it with 22 or whatever, like these animals, they have what we have. It's adrenaline, right? But bears, brother, these bears, their adrenaline is a different level. My first, actually my second, second black bear I got, I had a 30 at six. I shot that black bear across some Skilak up in Cottonwood, beautiful area from like 50 yards away.

I thought I missed because that black bear went gone. Just busted off for a quarter mile. Just ran. And I remember I was I was in shape. I just started running after that bear with my 30-odd-6. That bear hunkered down a quarter mile away, like running up and down hills. I was far behind. mean, it's like, well, it took me like a two minutes to get there or whatever the time was. He or she hunkered down, I can't remember. And I had a

I had my rifle on me and that bear was laying down looked at me. It was like, and I shot it in the face. was like, no, but come to find out that first shot did not miss that black bear. I shot with 30 out six had its lungs hanging out its side of its body and it bolted like nothing happened and ran for a quarter mile. Now imagine a 500 pound mother bear on top of you. I, with a 10 millimeter, which I don't

the bear safety thing with guns use what you're good at period period 45 10 millimeter i mean that's kind of what i'm here period right there and or 40 ⁓ and it they i could have put 50 rounds into that bear if i didn't hit her in the spine or in the brain i would have been ripped apart if ripped apart they're

The State I Am In (1:25:19)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Tyler (1:25:46)
Beasts of an animals.

The State I Am In (1:25:48)
That's a good point. Even though I haven't hunted bears, I have heard this exact story of people going bear hunting, laying down a good shot on a bear, and then having to track it forever. And they're like, what the heck? Like, did I not? Was it not a good shot? And they end up tracking it and they freaking find it like, know, mile away in a swamp somewhere or farther. And no, it was a great shot. But yeah, their adrenaline freaking carries them. I didn't even...

Think about that, literally on top of you, you unloading, she could have tore you into shreds even in that moment. I mean, she did. Yeah, it could have been a lot worse.

Tyler (1:26:23)
She did, but she could have done a lot more. A lot more than that.

A lot worse than that. Yeah. And I've heard stories of people putting a 44 like all all the 44 into her and her their buddy blasting with a 12 gauge and just after rounding out just dropped her in front of them. Like, that's a lot of rounds a lot of big rounds to you know, I 10 millimeters have they have that penetration, right? So and a lot of rounds.

The State I Am In (1:26:44)
Yeah.

Tyler (1:26:51)
You know, so they can go snout to ass right? They got that, that, that velocity behind it. Um, that's why, that's why I choose it. It doesn't have a lot of recoil. I, I suck at pistols, dude. I am horrible with a pistol and I love to practice more. And it's funny now people are like, Oh dude, yeah, you killed a bear. Why don't you come shooting with us? Like teach me how to shoot. I was like, dude, I literally shot myself. You know that?

The State I Am In (1:27:05)
It's not really an issue when it's like right there on top of you.

Tyler (1:27:23)
Does that ever come to mind? I make joke about that all the time. Obviously it was not an accident and the bear is on top of me, but it's like, shot myself, you know that, right? Like I'm not a good shot. Literally I had my target ⁓ two feet in front of me and I shot myself. That's kind of silly, right?

The State I Am In (1:27:29)
Yeah

my gosh.

Dude, it's so freaking wild. How do you go back to like quote normal life after that? You know, so like you have all this whirlwind of people wanting to talk to you. You got people tweeting about you. You got these, you know, tons of views, millions of views on social media, the TikTok, the stuff that you're putting out.

Tyler (1:27:47)
Mm-hmm.

The State I Am In (1:28:08)
Like how do you settle back into life? What was that transition like of kind of coming from that? then, cause you're like kind of starting, not starting over, but you're definitely starting something new being in Austin. Was that a hard transition for you?

Tyler (1:28:25)
No, my wife humbled me pretty good. I'm just joking. ⁓ No. You know, it was a lot of views and stuff. But honestly, I tried to put my views on TikTok and they took it down. They're like, that's animal abuse. I'm like, that bitch was attacking me. But anyways, you know, so it was actually all these other people that were posted, like I find out from someone texts me like, Hey, this guy posted a video and it has 5 million views. I'm like,

Good for you guys. That's cool. You know, and I actually I was I was at the state fair and I sat down and I pulled out my phone and I had a text from one of my coworkers. He said, hey dude, you are going viral. I was like, what? And I look at it and it's that Twitter one. It's like up to six million views and Joe Rogan and stuff. And there's this older lady just sitting next to me and I'm in my crutches, you know, bandages, casing, all this stuff. And I look at her, I was like,

The State I Am In (1:28:57)
Yeah, wow.

Tyler (1:29:25)
Have you ever had 6 million or 6.3 million people see your face in a day? She's like, what? I'm like, I just had 6.3 million people see my face after I got mauled by a bear. And she looked at me she's like, oh my dear God. Shocking. So yeah, I mean, I...

I go to places around here and it's like people are like, dude, you gotta tell me the story. And I started telling the story so much and in a very short amount of time, like I go to a party and I just, it was just all about the bear. And I love sharing the experience, but at point I was just like.

The State I Am In (1:30:03)
Hmm.

Tyler (1:30:07)
It's taken it away from me a little bit. So I kind of took a little break away from being the bear guy. I just, just like we were talking before this, I just recently started like having a purpose behind this, of finding some motivation and knowing that this is something that it's not about the views, it's not about that, it's about awareness and my purpose in life, my alignment.

The State I Am In (1:30:10)
Yeah.

Tyler (1:30:38)
And this experience has just jolted me right into my alignment. I know what I'm going to do now. I know what it is. I'm an outdoors guy, and I love it. I love being outdoors. And I want to share that with everybody. And I'm not afraid to go out there. I want to be out there. But I want people to be safe when they're out there.

The State I Am In (1:30:49)
Hmm.

Tyler (1:31:07)
I went to Alaska this last year. I was out in the woods by myself again and I loved it. I put a video out there that I was like, there's bears around me, right? was hiking Slaughter Ridge, which is also another awesome mountain.

The State I Am In (1:31:23)
I it either, but I've heard pretty awesome stories about it.

Tyler (1:31:27)
It's a good one.

You know, the playground of the key of the Alaska. It's the key, the kenai and I, can just go on about it. And, and I forgot I had gummy bears in my backpack and I was like, I'm hungry. But I was in the woods. I was like, you know, it'd be funny if because everyone knows me have been attacked by a bear and I'm out by myself and I put gummy bears on a branch. And as I was like, Oh, there's some, there's some bears around here. They're like, there. I was like, look, I saw some gummy bears. And they're like, Ah, this guy's

The State I Am In (1:31:41)
Bear guy, Yup.

Oh, that video got me. That video got me. And once you sent me your TikTok profile, when looked it up, I was like, oh shoot. I was like, is this the one? And then no, got me. Got me beers.

Tyler (1:31:55)
This guy's weird.

Nah, they're delicious. I ate

them anyways. They got dirt on them, but they're still good. Yeah.

The State I Am In (1:32:10)
Let's

talk about that. So you had this crazy experience and then you connected it with to this greater purpose, this greater sense of meaning in this device that you're coming up with. I want you to talk about when that idea of dropped in your head and the momentum and all the different things that kind of fell in behind it.

Tyler (1:32:34)
You know, it kind of came, it actually came to me in January of this, this last year. So damn near a year ago, I was, just got off of an interview with a creature preacher. He's a guy that's on TikTok. Super cool guy. He's like a zoologist. he's very educational. He talks about animals and stuff. And I was his first podcast interview and

I just, don't know what it was, because we were talking about how to keep people safe. That was always at the front of my mind, because I want to go out there, but I want to keep people safe. So I was like, how am going to do this? I don't want to have a thing, like a gun or bear spray or an air horn. That's something that you use, and that's a tool you use after something has escalated to a point of aggression, potentially.

and you can lead to something bad. And I remember just sitting there after that interview and my dogs, I love them, but they're loud and they bark a lot, just so much. And I'm used to, you know, just let my dogs run everywhere in Alaska, right here in Austin, it's not so much. And so this idea is just like, you got to just make them aware of you, or like you got to make nature aware of your presence.

Out in the wild. My father and I, like I said, even the most experienced people get lost in the great meditation of hiking and the beauty of nature. And guess what? Nature doesn't know you're there, right? You are in your own world enjoying nature and it's just like, your presence only reaches about 20 feet. Seriously, you're walking in the woods, your presence only reaches 20 feet away from you. Nothing else around 20 feet.

Unless you walk into their bubble, those are there. And so I started thinking, and also, one of my biggest pet peeves, and I'm not sorry to say this, are people that walk in the woods with speakers listening to Taylor Swift or Tupac. You know, I'm like, bro, no, go away. You know, I'm out here trying to enjoy, right? And I'm trying to get away from that kind of stuff. I like listening, Tupac, whatever.

The State I Am In (1:34:49)
Yeah.

Tyler (1:35:00)
Taylor Swift every so often. And that's for the car ride. And I just like, there's something I was like, I was right there. I'm like, what is this? And it just like dawned on me. I'm like, these animals have the sense of hearing that is just incredible and smell, right?

The State I Am In (1:35:23)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler (1:35:25)
So I just started to tink around with how well can bears hear? It's very interesting thought. Humans can only hear so far. Like then you get into this different range of frequencies that you're not aware of. Trust me, that's going around you. The ultrasonic frequencies are all around you. You can't hear it. Your dogs can, everyone else can. So I started digging. I started really digging.

I started really digging into, well, before that, I got curious about why bears were attacking him. It's like, why is this happening? You know, like, how does this happen? It's because you surprise them. You gotta let your presence know. Your presence need to be known. And that's what happened to me. So I started listening to all these guys getting mauled and they're like, oh, I had my gun on me. I had my bear spray on me, but I just surprised them and boom, here I am with half a face hanging off. So I really started.

The State I Am In (1:36:04)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler (1:36:24)
digging into it and there was no research on there was there was some there was some research on on the capacity of bears ⁓ ability to hear how far ranges they have. So I got I ended up telling my father my idea that I wanted to use ranges of frequencies that are high enough to where we can't hear it in the animals can.

Just to make them aware of your presence. Aware of your presence is the key. Because if they're aware of your presence, they don't want to be around you. My years of experience of hiking in Alaska, training in bear safety with my father and everything. And I was on the trail crew for Fish and Wildlife and you go through bear safety training and they have these videos of people hiking and game cams

You see a group of kids and family going on this trail and you know what's behind them? A bear. And then behind that bear, there's a group of people. And then there's a bear. These bears are doing the same thing that we're doing. They're using the trails, but they at least have some presence to know that there's some groups of people. So if they know you're there, they're not going to be around you. They don't want to see you. They're doing their own thing. So.

The State I Am In (1:37:40)
Yeah.

Tyler (1:37:46)
I made this device that projects ultrasonic frequencies every so often at a certain pace, certain rhythm that is attention grabbing to animals that I have tested and verified that they can hear this very well and they react in not an aggressive manner and it's and it's

It's just an attention grab, right? What people need to understand is that you are the repellent. You repel these animals. However, when you surprise these animals, you have now triggered their reaction. You have triggered a fight, flight, or they don't freeze really, but they fight. So how to stop that is...

The State I Am In (1:38:40)
Hmm.

Tyler (1:38:44)
to make them aware of your presence. this sound, it's essentially, to give an example, we're having our conversation right now. Now, we don't really have awareness all around us completely, but let's say your family comes in and shuts the door. Now you know your family's there. What's that? Your family's there. You picked up your, you start looking around like, okay, I know you're there. Your presence is known. Well, they could have,

shut that door quietly on accident, then they'll walk in the room, surprise you. But that's what it's doing. This is all this is doing is making a sound.

Far enough, that's the key, far enough away to give them adequate adequate adequate adequate adequate adequate adequate

This is a tool. This is a tool to make your presence a larger area. Like I said, your presence right now is 20 feet. Yes, you can yell. You can do all that stuff. that's, that's, trust me, it works. I went hiking forever and I, and I tell people I haven't ran into a bear in the last 10 years and I would go hiking all the time. Just look at my Instagram, dude. I'm just all over the place. Never run into bears except for that time.

when I set for that one time. Damn it. ⁓ There's a big time and because we were quiet, because we were quiet, we checked all the boxes, we were quiet. We surprised her. And that's that's pretty, but that's two boxes that you don't want to And she was a sow So it's just it's making your presence known at a larger area. You know, it's not always going to be needed. But it's something that you ⁓ that you know, you

The State I Am In (1:40:08)
Yeah, that was a big time.

Tyler (1:40:36)
How does the saying go? said it earlier should have it not need it rather than need it not have it, right? so this is a this is a project of mine that I am I am so aligned to because if All my friends know I want to bring you out I'm all about safety and I want people to have a great time out in the woods because it is such a beautiful place to be but

The State I Am In (1:40:41)
Yeah. You did not have it. ⁓

Tyler (1:41:06)
Be safe about it and with respect of the wild to let them know that you're there out of respect because you don't want to surprise them because you know what when when situations like mine happen Someone's going to lose So this is not only something that will potentially save human lives It will save animal lives because guess what? It's not just bears It goes even further for me personal my personal story is bears because I'm from Alaska

And bears are something that I am very aware of. Other places you got cougars, know, wolves in Alaska, you wolves, coyotes, you know, we'll give some testing on boars and see how this all works out. But for a fact, what I'm testing right now, I have verified is that it works with bears. Like I said, you are the deterrent. You are. This is just making your presence known at a larger area. And, ⁓

Right now, I'm getting the word out on it. ⁓

It's something that I'm looking for partners on this, you know, some investments to help push this forward, because it's something that I want to get out there yesterday. Right. And I, it's not only to the people who are just hiking, just, you know, me and you doing our fun thing out outside. This is for ⁓ game wardens. This is for ⁓ state parks.

The State I Am In (1:42:27)
Yeah.

Tyler (1:42:45)
You know, there's, ⁓ there's, you know, people bring big groups of people on hikes and sometimes they're quiet. And that's something that we all can use is always making that extra noise because it's just, it's mechanical. It's not going to stop. It's something that's always going to be going, always going to project your presence outward. So you can get into that meditative state. You can enjoy the wild yet. You can let your presence be known. You can let nature know that you're there.

And so that's something that I am extremely passionate about. you know, it's, this is this to me, this is a start of something that could just change, you know, because guns, work. Bear spray, they work sometimes. Maybe not in my situation. I would have been bear sprayed and mauled. Yeah, you know.

You know, you got the bear bells, that's a thing. But you know what? Honestly, let's not lie about it. They are annoying as hell. They let your president know, but you also have to be moving for it to work, And all those, you got the bear bangs. They're all very handy. I'm not saying don't bring those. This isn't like, I have this and now I'm safe. This is just another tool. But those are all reacting. Those are all tools of reaction, not prevention.

The State I Am In (1:43:53)
Mm-hmm. That's true, yeah.

Tyler (1:44:12)
This is a tool of prevention from preventing that scenario from happening in the first place. And you know, with that prevention, you just, you can enjoy it, man. And it's...

It's it's it's going to help a lot. It's gonna it's going to help a lot and I know it's it's going to save People from going through and animals going through experiences that I had just shared with you guys Right. It's I I said it the other day ⁓ As I was emailing some people to get this word out there the the catch I used on the the subject line was a I got shot and mauled by a bear

The State I Am In (1:44:41)
Yeah.

Tyler (1:44:55)
⁓ Nine out of ten I don't recommend and here's why because you know that one that one thing that one out of ten if I didn't I Don't think I I would have been aligned with my purpose as I am today And that's that's big for me

The State I Am In (1:45:14)
Dude, that's so cool. ⁓ It's one thing to come up with like a cool idea or a device, an app, whatever your creative mode is. ⁓ It's another to do something like that based out of some deep life-changing experience. And the way that this all panned out with you last year is the perfect fuel

for bringing some kind of meaningful change to the world through that experience so that nobody has to experience that again, or you can reduce the amount of people that experience, you know, bear attacks in the future. And to leave that kind of mark on the world is pretty special to have that opportunity. It sounds like you're already...

testing out this device, where you added the development of it or the marketing of it. ⁓ And yeah, I guess like what is the next biggest chapter for you in getting this out to the public?

Tyler (1:46:24)
So I, I've had some super just great people hear my story and hear what I'm trying to do. And they, they just helped me to make me a little prototype. It's just something I can test with.

Frequencies to see what suited at best and so I drove up to Alaska this last year with my grandpa I went through Banff and Jasper do it ⁓ Mountains It's so awesome, but there's bears on the way and I might have tested out some frequencies on this and yeah It works and so ⁓ I figured out that that was my first step is seen if it worked ⁓ and

and test out the frequency what worked best because my little I went to a patent attorney for this idea and this really stuck with me was he was like this is a million dollar idea son this is great you know what even if it doesn't work people will buy it to feel safe I was like I'm out of here dude like really did you

The State I Am In (1:47:31)
Snake oil salesman

run.

Tyler (1:47:33)
Did you

just say that to me? Dumbass. I was like, I'm out of here. So yeah, I don't work with him. ⁓ so right now in this moment of time, I've, I've, ⁓ you know, I'm pitching this idea at it's called the capital factory here in Austin. Come, come find out. I moved to it's like, wow, this is all destiny. ⁓ but Austin is one of like big hubs for entrepreneurship and

The State I Am In (1:47:36)
Yeah,

Yeah.

Tyler (1:48:02)
Boy is there a learning curve for a woodsman like me trying to be an entrepreneur, but I'm doing pretty damn good at it. think. And so I have my pitch deck. I'm going out in front of people. I'm, I'm looking for investors and partnerships to get this out there because ever as of right now for, um, I have a quote coming in with a prototyping engineering crew.

The State I Am In (1:48:10)
Bye

Tyler (1:48:26)
⁓ that I'm super aligned with and they love my mission. They love what I'm trying to do and they can make it for me. So they sent me a quote on how to make that prototype and the one that I want to then make multiple copies of and those multiple copies that I'm going to be making, I'm going to be sending out to different agencies, different people who want to test it out, just wear it, you know, give me feedback on how it feels on their chest. you know,

⁓ battery life because I'm not about them. I'm a dude. I'm outdoorsman. I'm a guy's guy. Okay, I'm gonna make something that freaking stays with you. It's not going to break like that. I go out into the woods and like bring a tool that just falls apart like no, I'm going to I'm going to make something that will stay with you that you can put in a box during the wintertime and grab it and feel safe the next year that you can hand to your son. You can you can hand to your your friends like hey, ⁓

You know, you got your guns, but just take this. Why not? You know, I got, I got friends that like girl girls that go out there and they're like, I don't want to go hiking. You know, by the way, always do hike with a partner. You know, like you can go by yourself. Be prepared, right? Like this, this, it's called Sound Bear-ier barrier. Like, isn't it like bear ear anyways, clever, ⁓ play on words, but, ⁓

The State I Am In (1:49:37)
Totally. Yeah.

Tyler (1:49:53)
No chat GT cheap, whatever, you know, I'm trying to say that was all me Yeah, this is where I'm at is I'm going to give that and give it to people get the feedback there's a guy in Tahoe that's around bears all the time is going to give me great feedback on this and ⁓ After I get that I have the credible people giving me feedback and from there

The State I Am In (1:49:58)
I couldn't stop that one up at all.

Tyler (1:50:23)
potentially, would hope to get grants or shit, I've been told to get on Shark Tank once or twice. And I think that that would be the time to get on there if needed if there wasn't someone out there listening that wanted to really get this out there with me like really is like feel aligned with me. And that's the thing I

I'm looking for alignment in this. People that feel the same as I do. ⁓

That's

That's powerful to me. Being able to work with someone that has the same belief, the same passion, same alignment, the same purpose, like the real thing, you know, that's, ⁓ you're out there somewhere. And so that's my game plan right now, is to make that next step and get this to the right hands. And then from there, ⁓ you know, whatever comes next after that is the problem for tomorrow. ⁓ I'm a problem solver.

The State I Am In (1:51:29)
Mm.

Tyler (1:51:29)
And

that's something I'll figure out. And dude, life is good, man.

The State I Am In (1:51:35)
That's an exciting opportunity. it does feel like besides the snake oil salesman of that one guy saying that, you know, even if it doesn't work, it'll make people feel safe. That is totally unaligned to your goals. And I'm glad you did that, dude. But thinking about the potential for that is really

Tyler (1:51:54)
Not aligned.

The State I Am In (1:52:02)
exciting. can see something like that hanging on the shelf of REI or, you know, sportsmen's because man, there are plenty of people that don't feel comfortable ⁓ carrying a gun out there, even though they know that's probably, you know, if if shit hit the fan, like that would be the best option to save your own life. There's a lot of people that wouldn't feel comfortable doing that. And there's a lot of people that don't feel comfortable going out, you know, with even freaking bear spray. I mean, I've seen people

Tyler (1:52:14)
Mm-hmm.

The State I Am In (1:52:32)
mace themselves with bear spray countless times and don't like doing that. And then the feel like kind of the trepidation of like, is this even gonna work? Am I just gonna piss something off? And like you were saying, it's both of those options and even some of the other smaller, you know, the whole bells, wearing bells or, you know, making sure to like not miss a beat with making your presence known. Like you said, you kind of get caught up being out in the outdoors and part of

Tyler (1:52:34)
Mm-hmm. Sucks.

Yeah.

The State I Am In (1:53:01)
the beauty of it is just being in the outdoors and enjoying it. And you do kind of get caught up in those meditative moments where you're just trying to like detach from, you know, the reality that we're used to and connect with the outdoors. so it's hard to maintain that 24 seven when you're out there. And so to have something do the work for you and let you experience, you know, nature as it is, I mean, there is definitely something there.

And then for the user, I mean, it does the work for you. sounds like it's something that just kind of, is it like intermittent pulses of these frequencies? Is it something that like the human ear picks up on? Like, is it going to drive you nuts? ⁓ Or is it something that just kind of functions on its own as you're in the outdoors?

Tyler (1:53:43)
Yep, there you go.

So the purpose of it is something that you will not pick up on. That is a big deal to me. I want to make sounds that they can hear and I can't without taking away from the user's experience, but yet keeping everyone else safe around them. ⁓ So it's not like... ⁓ How do I describe it? You hear that... ⁓

The State I Am In (1:53:58)
Okay.

Tyler (1:54:21)
the wave ⁓

but it's alerting, it's catching, it's attention grabbing for the ones that can hear it, right? And...

The State I Am In (1:54:54)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler (1:55:04)
You know, it's...

Yeah, that's just, you're not going to hear it. And it's just going to be something that you have on you. it's going to make a difference. It will. It's a question of when.

Yeah, just gotta keep on walking forward. You know, that's how you get that's how you hike, you know, one step at a time. And I'm quite the hiker. That's that's just what I'm going to do. And, know, you put yourself out there and the right people will come waiting for them.

The State I Am In (1:55:28)
Yeah.

Totally.

Totally. And I think that's definitely within the realm of possibility for you, man. Given your experience, given your history, being out in the woods, having the expertise of your dad with you out in the woods from day one. ⁓ Yeah, all the pieces do seem to be there to make this a pretty cool product and definitely ⁓ practical for a lot of different.

Tyler (1:55:50)
Yes.

The State I Am In (1:56:05)
I mean, just the outdoors people, I like that you mentioned, people that are working out in state parks and rangers and like, I could see that being an option of having that on every truck, on every ranger that's out kicking around in the woods, a lot of peace of mind there for sure.

Tyler (1:56:26)
You know,

I do want to add though, like I said earlier, but I want to reiterate this is this is not something that like you just wear this.

I'm not saying don't bring your like your other safeties like you know they weren't wearing a helmet in hockey until you know someone cracked their head a hundred times like you don't have to wear your helmet but it's probably a good thing to wear this is just a helmet on top of all your other gear that you should have right so yeah it's it's a it's just that extra tool to just probably save your life

The State I Am In (1:56:39)
Hmm, deterrent.

Yeah, totally.

Totally,

Tyler (1:57:05)
You

The State I Am In (1:57:05)
man. So how do people keep up with the development and what comes next? If someone was listening and interested in contacting you about this as either someone that was interested in investing or being a potential user for the trial for these ⁓ prototypes that you're working on, or if someone's just like, this is freaking awesome and I want to see what happens with it, how do they get in touch with you? How do they follow along?

Tyler (1:57:34)
Yeah, so I have a LinkedIn account Instagram I have a Facebook I I have a Have an email. I'm I'm currently gonna I'm gonna be making an a landing page My wife is a wizard at that and that is on my to-do thing and as soon as that is on there That's gonna be like on my Instagram like you go here

The State I Am In (1:57:55)
I'll have you ⁓ after this, just send me ⁓ all of the things that you want me to throw in the episode description so people can find it just wherever they listen, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, whatever, YouTube, so that they can be able to link up with that pretty easily. ⁓ So are you like, I did see on your TikTok, you did have like a pitch, it looked like, or some type of...

I don't know it was like a Kickstarter thing, like some type of speaking engagement that you're doing, what was that for?

Tyler (1:58:27)
That was for sound barrier. That was, ⁓ I...

Public speaking, man, it's something that's a learn skill. like I said, I'm in a place that is explosive for entrepreneurs. And that was the Capital Factory. it's actually going to go on on the 8th this month. And I showed up there just to learn, watch other people pitch. And they're like, you can do this QR code, and you can go up there and pitch. I was like, all right, screw it. You only live once.

The State I Am In (1:58:46)
Okay.

Yeah, send it.

Tyler (1:59:01)
Um, and everyone's

like, wait, you're going up there to the pitch. Like these are all random people. You don't know. I like, I'm not going to see you again unless you want to invest, right? And, uh, so I just went up there. I've winged it. Um, I just went with it. They're like, you only got two minutes up there. And I was like, all right, cool. So I went up there and I was like, I got mauled by a bear eight minutes later. I was still talking. So they must've liked it, but that's it. Like I said, I'm practicing on it and.

The State I Am In (1:59:08)
Yeah.

Tyler (1:59:31)
You know, this experience talking to you on the podcast is definitely helping build my how do I express this, the words I can use to connect to others and ⁓ really get this going.

The State I Am In (1:59:48)
Dude, you're doing a great job. I'll say public speaking is not my forte either. And yet I enjoy doing exactly this of just talking to other people and hearing their stories. And, you know, it's not an easy task to just pick up conversation with someone that you've never met before, let alone like, mean, just honestly, sometimes people that are acquaintances that you run into at Fred Meyer and you're just like, like trying to talk like a normal human being, like that sucks sometimes.

Tyler (1:59:53)
on your podcast.

Damn, you need melt too? Shit. Stop following me.

The State I Am In (2:00:24)
So

I think you're doing a good job. I'm so thankful that you were open to sharing your story on this podcast, just because it is all Alaska-based. And I think that your story is going to resonate with a lot of Alaskans. And we're going to be like ears up paying attention to what happens next and would be interested. ⁓ There might be people listening that would be interested in supporting that idea. And I hope there are.

Tyler (2:00:42)
Mm-hmm.

The State I Am In (2:00:55)
And ⁓ man, it's been such a cool experience being able to talk to you. And I think you are a natural storyteller, like you said earlier. And the story is what makes the device that much more meaningful. I heard one time someone explain this with bourbon, that bourbon is just alcohol, but it's tied to a story. And that's how people connect with that type of bourbon.

And it's kind of true. You watch the commercials, you listen to like, you know, it's got some like old cowboy, like with his cowboy boots kicked up, you know, on a stump near a fire. And it's like, you know, bullet bourbon or whatever it is. I don't know. I just threw that out there. This episode is not sponsored by bullet bourbon. not yet. Yeah. Bullet. If you're listening now. ⁓ But the story is. The story has so much weight.

Tyler (2:01:37)
Not yet, not yet ⁓

The State I Am In (2:01:54)
and it immediately makes your device credible, especially if it's proven out in the wild, especially if it's like performing and because it's preventing this crazy experience. It could be preventing this crazy experience that you went through and it makes it that much more meaningful. So dude, I'm super pumped for you and what's to come. And I hope you get on a million pods after this.

⁓ sharing the story. And I hope that it can still, you can still find some meaning. And now that you've connected it with some greater purpose, I hope the story resonates in that direction. Cause I can kind of get it. Like, you you're retelling the story of this thing that's happened to you and like over and over and over again. And it kind of like, you know, there's no end point besides just like, and I survived.

Tyler (2:02:49)
Yeah.

The State I Am In (2:02:49)
I lived happily ever after. Now it's

like, I've created this thing that could potentially save other people's lives and prevent exactly what happened to me. And in that, yeah, dude, wind in my sails for sure, if I were you, to keep telling that story and to find new meaning and new just life behind it. And so for that, super happy for you and the development of Sound Bear-ier

Yeah, I'm excited, man. I'm looking forward to following, know, I think I did follow you on Instagram and TikTok and seeing what happens next, but you'll definitely have to keep me posted on, you know, what's going on and ⁓ shoot, man. Maybe next time I talk to you, it'll be like where you can buy the sound barrier. That would be awesome.

Tyler (2:03:26)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, hopefully I don't have any more experiences to give back to you like the bear. Unless you want to talk about adak, that's another one. hey, that's for another time maybe.

The State I Am In (2:03:51)
No bears, no bears involved in Adak.

Tyler (2:03:54)
Dude, no bears on Adak, just aliens, but other than that. Wait a second, what did you just say, bud? Wait,

The State I Am In (2:04:00)
Hold up.

This guy just said aliens two hours into the podcast.

Manny (2:04:11)
If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to support the show by following and sharing it on social media, subscribing on YouTube and leaving a review wherever you get your podcast, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, wherever. It really helps more Alaskans and people everywhere join in on these conversations.

now, more than ever, I believe sharing the voices of our fellow Alaskans matters. And I will continue to do this work for as long as there are people willing to sit down and share meaningful conversations. Keep North Alaska. And thank you for joining me on the state I'm in.