Hiker, 63, uses karate moves to fight off bear
COMING face to face with an angry bear, few people would stick around and risk a fight.
But that’s exactly what one 63-year- old Japanese man did after being confronted by one of the creatures.
Taking things into his own hands, he unleashed his karate skills on the snarling beast.
Atsushi Aoki had hiked to a mountain creek where he was fishing when the 6ft 3in creature set upon him in what he said was an unprovoked attack.
In scenes reminiscent of Leonardo Di Caprio’s epic tussle with an angry bear in the Oscar-winning film The Revenant, Mr Aoki was bitten and scratched repeatedly, including on his head.
‘The bear was so strong and it knocked me down,’ Mr Aoki told Japanese media.
‘It turned me over and bit me right here,’ he added, pointing to his bandaged leg.
Instead of trying to outrun the beast – an Asian black bear – the fisherman decided he would put his well- honed karate skills to good use.
After assuming a fighting stance with his right fist in front of him, Mr Aoki jabbed at his attacker’s eyes, which sent the creature scrambling away into the woods.
‘I thought it’s either “I kill him or he kills me”,’ Mr Aoki said. The plucky fisherman managed to make his way back to his car and drive himself to a hospital in Gunma, northwest of Tokyo, despite the mauling that left him with injuries to his head, arm and leg. ‘He drove himself to hospital and he even remembered to grab the fish that he had caught,’ a local police officer said. The incident has been hailed in the Japanese press as a man-versus-nature tale of triumph.
‘ Man fights off bear with bare hands!’ the Nikkan Sports tabloid screamed.
Despite media excitement over the episode, authorities in Japan advise against this course of action when confronted by one of Japan’s numerous wild bears.
Earlier this year four people were killed in separate bear attacks. Last month, a ten-year-old girl was left in a critical condition in hospital after she was mauled by a female black bear in British Columbia, Canada.
According to officials, the girl had been walking home with her father and grandmother from swimming when they came across a bear cub and the protective mother bear attacked.
The girl suffered a punctured lung, broken ribs and superficial cuts elsewhere on her body, and had to have surgery.