Mauling rescue re-created for TV show

Bram Schaffer has quite the story to tell about surviving a brutal grizzly bear mauling near Cooke City during the 1995 hunting season, and he tells it in the “I Shouldn’t Be Alive” series on the Animal Planet channel.

The only reason Schaffer is alive was the serendipitous help of Bigfork-area resident Bruce Piasecki and his son Bryce, who lives in Lakeside.

Piasecki plays a major part in the currently airing episode of the show, called “Nightmare on a Mountain,” that details the attack and the subsequent rescue of Schaffer during a torrential storm in the Beartooth Mountains.

“They interviewed me about seven months ago,” Piasecki said of the program’s London-based producers. He added that it was a rigorous process that totaled about seven hours.

Within a couple of years of the incident, Piasecki had done some national television programs, including a “Dateline” segment that involved him revisiting the actual area of the attack. But for the Animal Planet show, actors were used to re-create scenes and Piasecki provided narration.

“It’s pretty cool how they put it together,” he said.

In 1995, Piasecki was a painting contractor in Billings. He and Bryce, who was then about 18, were hunting elk with muzzleloading rifles about 10 miles from the remote mountain outpost of Cooke City.

After a day of hunting during the September backcountry season, the two were hiking back to camp when they heard a couple of distant gunshots. They continued moving until a fierce storm started up and they hunkered down for a rest.

“We had rain, we had sleet, we had snow, we had wind, everything a storm can have. We had lightning,” Piasecki recalled.

On a curious whim, Piasecki wondered if his wet muzzleloader would still work. “I said, ‘Let’s see if this thing will fire,’” he recalls.

It did fire. And moments later, he and Bryce heard two rifle shots not far away. They started working their way in that direction, and within 150 yards, they came across Schaffer lying on the ground.

“His head was just bloody,” Piasecki said, adding that Schaffer’s shoulder was torn “a whole section of his thigh was folded down.”

They learned that Schaffer, who was about 18 at the time, had been mauled by a bear.

After providing some crude first aid, Piasecki started carrying the wounded man about a mile through the storm. Bryce helped by carrying all their guns and gear.

Piasecki recalls “being worried” about the potential of encountering the grizzly bear along the way.

After about two hours, they got Schaffer into their tent, and other hunters who were camping nearby rode horses to a ranger station about five miles away for help, not returning until about 3 a.m.

A medical helicopter from Billings was unable to land at night, largely because of the storm, so it flew into Gardiner. Just after sunrise, two rescue teams and the helicopter arrived at the camp at about the same time, Piasecki said.

After Schaffer was flown to a Billings hospital, the complete story of what had happened started coming together.

Schaffer had been hunting with his father and some friends, and they decided to split up in the afternoon and meet at their camp at the end of the day.

Piasecki said Schaffer was mauled about 15 minutes later, and his fellow hunters had no way of knowing what had happened.

Schaffer had encountered a female grizzly bear with a cub who were feeding on an elk carcass.

“He got between the bear, the cub and the food and that’s why the bear attacked him,” Piasecki said.

The bear made repeated charges at Schaffer, and he eventually was able to fire a round from his rifle in its direction. That succeeded in driving it away.

Piasecki and his son had been no more than 100 yards from the elk carcass earlier in the day, when they stopped just off a small nearby clearing to call for elk. They never detected any bears, but Piasecki guesses they already were feeding on the carcass.

“We just never got between them,” he said.

Piasecki still marvels about the fortunate circumstances involved in finding Schaffer.

“The whole thing was meant to be,” he said. “I know I was pointed to that guy. There’s something else he was meant to do. He wasn’t supposed to die.”

Schaffer nearly did die after getting to the hospital, and had to go through special treatment to fight gangrene in his leg wound.

Now living in Broadus, Schaffer obviously provided a major role in the episode of “I Shouldn’t Be Alive.”

Piasecki was caught off guard when the episode started being shown on the Animal Planet channel early this week. He thought that it wouldn’t start until mid-February.

“A lot of my friends and customers are calling me and saying, ‘Why didn’t you call me,” said Piasecki, who moved to the Flathead Valley in 1998 to start Bigfork Propane.

The episode is scheduled to be shown multiple times on Animal Planet through Feb. 14.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com