October 1, 2026, by Robert Stark, Seward Folly

The Attack

Jake’s back wounds as a result of the bear attack.

Photo by Jake Boulden

It was a sunny fall morning on Thursday, September 24, 2026, when Jake Boulden was mauled by a brown bear sow in the Questa Woods subdivision nearly seven miles outside of Seward, three hundred yards from the home he grew up in.

“I don’t blame her,” said Boulden, bite marks covering his torso. “It was a textbook close-proximity defensive attack. She was doing what her species was meant to do, protecting her cub.”

Forty-two-year-old Boulden had just finished loading a dump truck with gravel when he left the excavator running to explore an old flood channel with a supposed salmon fry population. A brush pile with a summer’s worth of stumps and debris burned nearby as a slight northerly breeze blew smoke into the woods.

Jake walked through fallen cottonwood leaves in a spruce and alder forest as he approached the stream. When he reached it, he heard the unmistakable sound of a bear’s grunt.

“I know the sound,” he said. “The ‘woof’ of a bear. It wasn’t the first time I had heard it. We locked eyes for a second and I yelled, ‘Get the F outta here, bear!’”

The cub ran off as the sow dropped her ears back and charged, closing the 20-foot distance in a split second.

“It was at this time I knew I was in for a fight,” Boulden said.

Boulden reared back with his six-foot-three-inch frame, and with 230 pounds of pure adrenaline, he threw the hardest punch he had ever thrown, connecting with the bear’s head. Boulden landed three punches and dodged two or three swipes from the bear’s claws.

“I am not a good boxer,” he said. “I never have been. I just got lucky.”

They “wrestled around” for thirty seconds before the bear reared up on its hind legs and knocked him to the ground with a single swipe. She pinned him down in the creek and left him absolutely helpless.

“The sheer power of the animal was incredible. That is when she started chewing on me,” he said, shaking while retelling the story. “I was not on the top of the food chain. It makes you feel real small.”

Jake’s deep wound on one of his legs as a result of the bear attack.

Photo by Jake Boulden

The brown bear bit Boulden a total of three times. All three were on the back right torso. The first was in the mid-to-lower back, leaving four punctures ranging from three to seven-and-a-half centimeters deep. The second was in the mid-back, leaving four puncture wounds from the canines that went completely through. That bite crushed muscle under immense pressure. “My whole back was basically in a vice,” he later wrote. The third bite was on Boulden’s shoulder and underarm area. “This is the bite she held for the longest as I played dead, waiting for the kill shake.” The puncture wounds from this bite went all the way through and were several centimeters deep, with drag marks left before the teeth pierced the flesh.

“I was able to avoid the claws for the most part,” Boulden wrote. “Except for one laceration about three inches long and one and a half inches wide across my groin area. The doctor said the claw mark missed my femoral artery by one centimeter. Strangely enough, the wound wasn’t bleeding.”

“The last injury is a strained left knee. I’m not sure how it happened, other than getting twisted up in the battle,” Boulden said.

Bear bite in Jake’s wallet.

Photo by Jake Boulden

While pinned to the ground, Boulden’s brain raced through countless scenarios that he could not explain.

“It’s unreal how much you can visualize in such a brief time,” he said, pausing to hold back the tears. “I’m sorry… It’s just… I saw memories of the past and the future; the life my kids would have without a father.”

Maybe it was Boulden’s childhood obsession with bear attacks or his reading of “Alaska Bear Tales” that provided the intuitive tools he needed to survive. Maybe it was luck, divine intervention, or the conscious decision of the bear to let him live. We will never know, but in that moment Jake Boulden went against every instinct to “give the bear one last elbow to the head.”

Jake played dead.

“I didn’t just play dead,” he said. “It is like I really died. My soul left my body. My body went completely limp for three to five seconds. I waited for the death shake, when bears shake their heads while biting and tearing flesh. I knew it was going to hurt.”

But then somehow, for some reason, the bear released its bite and walked away.

“It was her decision to let me live,” he said. “She decided that I was no longer a threat.” 

Boulden immediately got up and hobbled out of the woods toward safety. He yelled for the sow to leave while walking toward his truck.

“I couldn’t tell how much I was bleeding or the extent of my wounds,” he said. “But I know the severity of bear attacks and I felt very lucky to be alive.”

Boulden stumbled through the smoke and climbed into the excavator to shut off the engine before trying to use his phone to call for help. The phone was crushed by the bear. He yelled for help but nobody came. He got in his truck and drove to the hospital, passing his employer on the way. His employer did not quite understand the hand signals Boulden gave him, which caused a laugh later on.

Jake’s broken phone as a result of the bear mauling.

Photo by Jake Boulden

The Providence Hospital emergency room doors were locked, and the automatic door button did not open them, so he pushed the call button and waited for what seemed like eternity until someone came.

“I was writhing in pain, hunched over and bleeding. I told them, ‘I’ve been attacked by a brown bear, and I need help.’”

The hospital staff flushed out the wounds and packed them with gauze. The wounds that did not go in one side and out the other were cleaned and covered with bandages. Those were the ones that hurt the worst, admitted Boulden.

Alaska Department of Fish & Game Trooper Seth Kollman questioned Boulden about the incident and swabbed his wounds to document and file the bear’s DNA. His clothes were also taken as evidence of the attack.

Boulden was released from the hospital four hours later to return home to his ten-year-old son, Brandton; eight-year-old daughter, Brooklynn; and his loving wife, Kari.

Jake hunting with his family.

Photo by Jake Boulden

“I was given another chance at life,” he said, holding back the tears. “I was beyond the moon to see my wife and kids again.”

That evening, while mending his wounds, Boulden helped his son complete his hunter education course.

“Don’t let a brown bear attack get in the way of hunter education,” he said.

An Avid Outdoorsman

This was not the first time Boulden had been close to a bear, but it was the first time he was attacked. He had fished within 50 feet of brown bears several times on the Russian River, and he even crossed paths with one on the trail down to the fishing hole.

“I never worried about the bears on the river because they were well-fed on salmon,” he said. “If you don’t outfish the bears, they won’t mess with you.”

An avid outdoorsman, Jake was born and raised in Seward, where he started hunting at the age of ten. His love of hunting started with birds and ducks, and by the time he was in high school, he had gone on a couple of moose and caribou hunting trips. In 2006, he started an annual moose hunt while attending the University of Alaska Anchorage, where he graduated with degrees in business and economics. He has hunted at the same moose camp near Delta Junction for the past 13 years.

Jake with his children during a moose hunting trip.

Photo by Jake Boulden

“We’ve been taking the nice road trip up north ever since the kids were in diapers,” he said. “It is a great opportunity to see the fall colors. To unplug and enjoy the outdoors.” 

He worked on a commercial seiner for five years during and after high school and later worked as a charter boat deckhand out of Seward. No matter where he went, he always brought his fishing pole.

“I’ve always been a sport fisherman,” he said. “Even now, I’ll take my dad’s boat out on nice days to fish for halibut, king salmon, and silvers.”

Jake with his family.

Photo by Jake Boulden

When asked how his near-death experience impacted his life and how he wants to live out the rest of his days, he said, “I want to give my kids the best possible future they can have and make sure that when I do leave this earth, I am remembered as someone who did more good than bad.” 

When Bears and Humans Collide

Boulden believes that better bear management and monitoring by the Alaska Department of Fish & Game, combined with an increase in hunters harvesting brown bears, can reduce bear attacks in at-risk neighborhoods. He believes that the small brown bears are the ones being pushed out of the woods by the large ones, and when there are too many large ones, the small ones flood the neighborhoods. 

“Sometimes bears get a little too comfortable in the human element,” he said. “Repetitive behaviors and quick snacks can become an inevitable problem.”

Boulden believes that residents in bear areas need to educate themselves on bear behavior, be “bear aware,” and increase their activity within the neighborhoods.

“Bear attacks are going to happen,” he said. “They have been happening since before statehood. Some neighborhoods are in the path between the mountains and the salmon streams, so there will always be an overlap of bears and people.”

“I don’t hate the bear who attacked me. I never felt anger toward her. It was doing what it was made to do. This is their home, too — we are encroaching. As Seward continues to grow into the surrounding forest, we will have more and more bear encounters.”

“The sheer vastness of Alaska and its different opportunities provide a truly unique lifestyle that I have accepted to live with. I truly enjoy my time outdoors, whether fishing or hunting, and I always will. I have the utmost respect for bears — they are incredible creatures with immense power — I have been left with even more respect,” said Boulden.

The recent attack was not the first bear mauling in Seward. Ten years earlier, Boulden’s former shop teacher, Ronn Hemstock, was attacked in the dark by a 900- to 1,000-pound brown bear while walking his dog before school. See Craig Medred’s article “Bear Fighter.” Ten years before Hemstock’s attack, Carl Backlund was in his yard near the Bear Creek Fire Hall five miles outside of Seward, not far from Boulden’s attack, when an “old crusty boar nearly tore his face off,” according to Ronn Hemstock.

Luckily, Jake Boulden, Ronn Hemstock, and Carl Backlund are survivors, but that is not always the case. Based on a report by the State of Alaska Section of Epidemiology, titled “Hospitalizations and Deaths Resulting from Bear Attacks — Alaska, 2000–2017,” 10 people were killed by bear attacks between 2000 and 2017, and 66 people were injured.

What can be done to prevent the next bear attack? Would better monitoring and management from the Alaska Department of Fish & Game help? Would an increase in hunters harvesting brown bears and a decrease in the pressure larger bears put on smaller bears help? Would better education and awareness among Alaskans living in bear country help? Or is there something else that was not mentioned?

Only time will tell, but for now, Jake Boulden is happy to have another chance at life — a life that he will not take for granted.

Boulden wants to take the opportunity to thank everyone who reached out to him during this difficult time as he recovers from his injuries.

Robert Stark graduated with Jake Boulden from Seward High School in 2002. He is an author and farmer who lives on 40 acres in Happy Valley with his wife and four kids.