By Mark Heinz, Outdoors Reporter
Mark@CowboyStateDaily.com
In those few moments of furious violence in the remote high country of the Gro Ventre mountains, Lee Francis knew his life hung in the balance between a grizzly’s teeth and claws and his trigger finger.
“He was probably less than 1 foot away from the muzzle of the pistol, and it was just ‘bam, bam, bam, bam!’ As fast as I could shoot,” Lee Francis, 65, told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday as he described tangling with grizzly late Friday in the Wyoming back country.
And even though he ended up shooting himself in the left foot during the frantic struggle, Francis said his 10 mm Glock ultimately tipped things in his favor.
He’s glad to have escaped a severe and quite possibly a fatal mauling from the grizzly he’d startled in its den.
“Although a pistol shot isn’t good either, it’s still been hurting me a lot,” he said, speaking over the phone as he continues to recover at his son’s house in Provo, Utah.
Wyoming Survival 