Sunday, December 03, 2006
Hensley lives to talk about attack by bear
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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Thurman Hensley isn't used to being stuck indoors this time of year.
A lifelong hunter, he usually spends this season in the woods pursuing bears and white-tailed deer around his property bordering Shenandoah National Park near Grottoes.
But being confined to a rented hospital bed beats what could have become of Hensley after he went head to head, literally, with an enormous black bear on Nov. 17.
"He had such horrendous wounds I'm surprised he's still here," Hensley's wife, Jennifer, said Thursday. "He looks like he's been in the water with a shark."
Hensley, a 60-year-old retiree, battled the bear after he shot it with a muzzleloader during a hunt on the family's property.
His scalp, left arm, right hand and left leg were all severely lacerated.
"His leg is the worst," said his daughter, Shea Willis. "It looks like someone just took out a scoop of flesh."
He has too many stitches to count.
"They aren't pretty stitches, either," she said. "They're, 'We've got to get this man back together' stitches."
Except on Hensley's head. A female plastic surgeon worked on a cut above his eye.
"She did way too neat a job," Jennifer Hensley said, chuckling. "I really wanted a scar there."
The women were remarkably upbeat during our phone conversations, impressive after what the family has been dealing with the past couple of weeks.
Thurman Hensley's devastating wounds are just part of it.
The family has also been frustrated by erroneous and sometimes cavalier accounts regarding the attack, and even by nasty whispers by some who have said that Thurman Hensley got what he had coming.
One of those comments came from a man who didn't know he was talking to a Hensley family friend.
"He said he wished the bear had finished the job," Jennifer Hensley said.
Thurman Hensley, you see, isn't a low-key guy.
He's a passionate and successful hunter with, among other things, 17 bear bow kills to his credit. He's also a hard-working land steward who is fiercely protective of the 200 or so acres the family has worked hard to develop into something of a wildlife haven.
Over the years the family has repeatedly called the law on trespassers, including some bear hunters they suspected were involved in illegal bear chases with dogs.
"You either love him or you hate him," Willis said of her dad.
The family wonders if a man who isn't a fan of Hensley helped spread incorrect information regarding the attack, which may have contributed to erroneous accounts.
Early reports said that Thurman Hensley thought the 600-pound bear was dead when he approached it.
That assertion, coupled with the public appearance that Hensley's wounds weren't too serious -- he was listed in good condition during most of his hospital stay -- probably contributed to the lighthearted approach some took regarding the attack.
As in, did you hear about the dumb hunter who, armed only with a single-shot gun, got attacked when he approached a huge bear he thought was dead?
It's not funny, of course. And not true, either.
Hensley knew the bear was alive.
But, his wife says, his vast experience with bears -- including two previous close calls from which he emerged unscathed -- may have contributed to him not being as cautious as he should have been when he tried to dispatch the wounded animal.
"He just thought he would handle the situation," she said. "We've gotten into hairy situations before and always gotten out of it."
When the bear didn't go down after Hensley shot it in its vitals, Hensley made the choice to track it quickly because he was afraid he wouldn't recover the bear if it made it to the park, on which hunting is not allowed.
While tracking the bear he encountered two neighbors who joined the effort.
When they found the bear and shot it again, it still didn't go down. Eventually it ended up in a laurel thicket with just its head showing.
Hensley decided to try to dispatch the bear with a shot to the head from a range of about 30 feet, Willis said. The bullet hit the bear high in the neck. Instead of going down, the bear shot out of the brush and was on Hensley in an instant.
As the bear charged, Hensley raised his left arm to protect his face. He put his right hand in the bear's mouth to try to gag it, having read somewhere that's one way to fend off an attack.
Hensley's friends shot at the bear but one apparently missed, and the other had his muzzleloader misfire.
With no time to reload, they ran up and started hitting the bear with their guns.
"They broke their gun stocks over its head," Willis said.
When the bear turned its attention to the men, they ran. When it gave chase, Hensley was able to roll down the hill and over a small drop. He lay still as the slowing bear returned. When the bear was a safe distance away, Hensley got up and made his way down the mountain.
He was soon being airlifted to the UVa Medical Center in Charlottesville.
During his hospital stay Hensley underwent numerous surgical procedures, and he has already had one skin graft. A ruptured femoral artery after one procedure provided an especially scary moment, the women said.
For the most part, his recovery has been astounding.
"He's a tough old bird," his daughter said.
Hensley even chuckled along with his friends at first when they made bear hunting jokes in an effort to make him feel better.
"After about a day of that," his wife said, "he looked at me and said, 'I can't do any more bear jokes.' "
You can't blame him.
It's hard to find anything funny about what he's been through.
