A Cody antler hunter who was severely mauled by a grizzly bear in Sunlight Basin on Friday apparently surprised the animal in its daybed. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department said this week that it was a quick encounter, which ended when the grizzly bit into a can of bear spray and left the area.

Spencer Smith, 41, suffered injuries in the attack, including severe bites to his head and neck. He walked 1.5 miles to get help afterwards, before being airlifted to a Billings hospital for treatment.

Smith had been hiking by himself “in steep, moderately heavy timber” when he was attacked, the Game and Fish said in a Tuesday news release. The department said Smith “was unaware of the bear until it made contact with him.”

The adult male bear ultimately bit into a bottle of bear spray — still in its holster on the antler hunter’s hip — and it exploded in the bear’s mouth. The grizzly then disappeared into the thick woods.

“This is an unfortunate example of just how quickly these things happen. He [Spencer Smith] wasn’t able to get his bear spray out of his holster because it just happened so fast. He didn’t have any warning that it was coming,” Cody Region Wildlife Supervisor Dan Smith said in a Tuesday interview. He added in a statement that, “the bear was likely behaving in a defensive manner resulting from an unexpected, close encounter.”

The experienced backcountry hiker was near the East Painter Creek drainage, said Game Warden Chris Queen, and had done everything right leading up to the attack. Spencer Smith contacted Queen prior to heading out on his hike, asking about bear activity in the area and relaying his plans to the game warden. Smith was carrying bear spray and a Garmin inReach satellite communication device, allowing him to signal for help after the attack.

Queen responded to the scene, finding Smith’s ATV parked near the drainage. Soon after, Smith walked out of the woods to Queen.

“I tried to not let my eyes tell him how bad it was,” Queen said in a Tuesday interview.

He said it was Spencer Smith’s resilience that got him back to safety.

“The most significant factor to him making it out was his toughness,” Queen said.

The game warden tended to Smith until a helicopter from Guardian Flight arrived. It took him to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Billings around noon — only about an hour and 15 minutes after he signaled for help. Smith was released from the hospital on Saturday.

“This is a very traumatic experience for a person to go through,” Dan Smith said in Tuesday’s release. “We wish Spencer the very best for a full and speedy recovery.”

The Game and Fish found a bear daybed “in heavy cover,” about 30 yards from the attack. Evidence at the scene indicated that the bear was either in or near that daybed at the time of the incident. Game and Fish personnel were unable to locate the animal.

“There’s no way for us to identify the bear,” Dan Smith said. “Obviously, there’s more than one bear in the area.”

With the incident apparently involving a surprise encounter and the department unable to find the bear, “Game and Fish does not plan to take management action at this time, and no area closures have been implemented,” the department said in its release. “Game and Fish will continue to monitor bear activity in the area and will make management decisions in the best interest of public safety.”

Queen said you never know what a bear will do in these situations and it’s hard to be prepared for an attack that happens so quickly.

In 2010, Queen was riding his horse in the Sunlight district when a thunderstorm rolled in. He waited out the storm under a spruce tree with the horse and his red heeler. After the storm passed, he headed up Blacktail creek, north of Crandall, and saw a sow and her cub at a distance moving toward him.

“There were no bluff charges, the bear just kept coming. At about 25 yards she rounded a big root ball of a spruce that had tipped over. She turned and came at me like a cutting horse,” Queen recounted. “I let her get within 30 feet before I let her have it with my spray.”

A cloud of orange went out, hanging long enough for the bear to run into it. She dropped her back legs and slid to a stop.

“If you spend enough time out in that country, eventually you’re going to have an encounter,” the game warden said. “That encounter could be good or it could be bad.”

After the encounter Queen began drawing his can of bear spray if he couldn’t see more than 50 yards ahead. He also likes to carry two cans of spray if he’s out for more than a day hike. “What if you see two bears?” he asked rhetorically.

In 2018, Queen was forced to shoot a charging grizzly in self-defense. With a strong wind in his face, bear spray wasn’t a viable option. In those conditions, an investigator said, Queen could have incapacitated himself or died if he’d tried to use the spray.

In Spencer Smith’s case, “there may have been nothing he could have done to ward off the attack. Even if he was with a half-dozen people, you never know the frame of mind of a bear,” Queen said. “Until you are confronted with something like that — with a bear coming at you — you have no comprehension of how fast they truly are.”