Wolf attack

[jim in Anchorage]

From the Alaska outdoors forum.

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Don't know if this has been posted or not, my apologies if it has. Just saw it in the News Miner and thought it was interesting. Not really sure why the guy would go walking down a river at 2 am with his rifle. Not something I would do...JMO though

Alaska hunter attacked by rabid wolf, survives

The Associated Press
Originally published Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 3:50 p.m.
Updated Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 7:04 p.m.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - An Alaskan hunter has survived a rare attack by a rabid wolf.

Roderick Phillip, 35, was at a bonfire near Kalskag with three hunting partners earlier this month when he went down to the nearby Kuskokwim River to look for moose. It was around 2 a.m.

Alone, without his gun, Phillip noticed a white figure lurking near the campsite. He saw it was a wolf and yelled "wolf!" to alert his hunting partners. His yell caught the animal's attention and it lunged at Phillip full-speed, biting him on the leg.

The wolf and Phillip wrestled for a few moments before Phillip's brother shot the animal with a rifle, killing it. They later learned the wolf was rabid.
"When it bit me, it felt like somebody grabbed me on the skin. It didn't feel like a bite," Phillip told the Anchorage Daily News on Friday. "As soon as it bit me, I took my right arm and put it on the wolf's neck and turned down on the ground. I was on top of him and choking him at the same time I had my shoulder pushing down toward him. I didn't want to let it go."
Phillip said he received a shipment of rabies vaccine. He will need five shots over 28 days to ward off the disease. His leg wounds were not serious.

Wolf attacks on humans are rare, and the known cases almost always involve wolves that are rabid or otherwise sick, said Kimberlee Beckmen of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Phillip's attack was the second time in recent years a rabid wolf has attacked a person or animals in Southwest Alaska. In 2007, a pack of rabid wolves killed a half-dozen dogs in a village.
There have been 19 confirmed cases of rabies in wolves in Alaska since 1971, Beckmen said.

The disease is more common among foxes, she said.

"That area - down on the Yukon-Kuskokwim area - has red fox rabies every year," Beckmen said. "When they're actually clinical with rabies, they are biting at anything that moves. In fact, it doesn't even have to be an animate object. They just bite indiscriminately. And it's because their brain is inflamed."

As rabies progresses, Beckmen said, animals lose fear of people and eventually die of seizures.

 

[peyton]

My son in law is wandering all over the Alaska Chugach Mountains with his friends unarmed. I tried to explain to him humans are not the top of the food chain.

 

[Rio Laxas]

That's pretty scary. It is a little off topic, but I was up on the haul road yesterday on the way back from pump station 3 and we saw a massive black wolf south of Coldfoot. It was a magnificent looking creature. It was so large we thought it was a black bear from a distance. I got to take a few pictures of it and then some bowhunters came by and started after it. It didn't seem afraid of people and came back out on the road even after they had shot at it.

 

[caribou]

The Wolf had Rabies, thats why it attacked the man, not because it was hungry.

This is an extreamly rare attack. Most attacks are made by rabid Fox's or Dogs that were bitten by rabid Fox.
We still have rabie epidemics all over Alaska, every few years.

Incidently, the last man around here that was "Killed by a Wolf" was a man named Punekok Sampson, who was attacked by a Rabid Wolf back in the 30's. He died a few months later in Kotzebue from the Rabies he caught from the Wolf's bites.
He was my father in law's father in law.....