Doubt cast on man’s bear attack tale by Alberta Fish and Wildlife

Looking at Justin Gambler's battered face, there's no doubt the 22-year-old Alberta man had a nasty encounter. But experts are not buying his claim it was with a bear.

Gambler said he was riding an all-terrain vehicle Friday near his family's trapping cabin not far from Calling Lake, Alta., about 200 kilometres north of Edmonton, when the vehicle got hung up on a log, the Edmonton Journal reported.

According to his father, Jack Cardinal, a black bear charged Gambler as he tried to free the ATV.

“He just wanted to get out of there,” Cardinal told the Journal. “He did whatever he could to survive.”

Gambler told CTV News he escaped the battering bruin by kicking it in the nose. He ran about five kilometres to a road, where passing hunters picked him up and called 911. He was airlifted to hospital in Edmonton, where he received 27 stitches to close gashes around his right eye. He also suffered minor wounds to his leg.

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But officers from Alberta Fish and Wildlife cast doubt on Gambler's story after investigating.

"With all the evidence the team has collected here, it does not support a wildlife attack," Mike Ewald told CTV News.

Cardinal is backing his son's version. He told the Journal he returned to the site on Saturday, the same day wildlife officers were investigating, and he found bear tracks and blood.

“I believe my son. I still do because who else would go over there?" he said. "There’s nobody out there. There’s no other tracks, just him.”

Ewald would not say what he thinks might have happened out there in the bush but said it's not the first time someone has claimed falsely that they've been attacked by a wild animal.

“It happens enough that in my training in dealing with wildlife human attacks, we also cover training and scenarios where we have reported wildlife human attacks that turn into other things such as criminal investigations,” Ewald told the Journal.

The incident was still under investigation, he added, but not by his agency. The RCMP told the Journal it was not investigating.

Gambler's alleged encounter was taken seriously because just two weeks earlier, an oil sands worker was killed by a bear near Fort McMurray, Alta.

QMI Agency reported in 2011 that in the previous 110 years, 63 people were killed by black bears in the U.S. and Canada, 86 per cent of them in attacks since 1960. According to Backpacker.com, there were 29 bear-related deaths in the first decade of this century, 15 in Canada, with black bears and grizzlies the main culprits.

[ Related: Grizzly bear attack of B.C. men brings terror and screams ]

That's still fewer deaths on average than from bee stings, dog bites or lightning strikes. But apparently people aren't above inventing bogus bear attacks.

A 13-year-old Vancouver Island boy claimed in 2010 that he fought off a rampaging bear with a pocket knife while out jogging in the coastal town of Port Alberni, CBC News reported at the time.

But he recanted his tale after investigators questioned how he got the marks on his torso the boy alleged came from his tussle with the bear. There was no explanation why he made up the story or how the bruises got there.

And earlier this year a Florida man was forced to back away from his story that he was tossed around by an angry black bear that attacked him while he was sitting outside his mobile home, drinking beer.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, the man claimed the bear emerged from some bushes and started grappling with him but backed off after he punched it several times.

However, when pressed, the man admitted he only glimpsed the bear for a second as it passed through the property. He got up to chase it up a hill, where he fell down and hurt himself, the Sentinel said.