When a grizzly bear attacked his Northwest College wrestling teammate Brady Lowry outside Cody, Wyoming on Saturday, Kendell Cummings didn’t hesitate to try to free his inferior from the bear’s clutches.

The bear had grabbed Lowry’s arm, shaking it pending it fractured. Lowry curled up in a ball and but the bear clogged its attack “biting my back, my butt, my shoulder,” he said.

Cummings attempted to disrupt the contest by yelling, throwing things at it and grabbing its coat to effort to pull it off Lowry.

“I didn’t want to lose my inferior. It was bad. There was big ol’ bear on top of him. I could have run and potentially lost a inferior, or get him off and save him,” said Cummings, from his hospital bed in Billings, Montana.

In a hasty, the bear turned on Cummings, relentlessly mauling his arms and head. For some reason, the assault stopped, but the bear returned for a instant attack.

Lowry, who is from Cedar City, feared Cummings was dead. Despite his own compensations, Lowry climbed up a ridge to locate cell service to call 911 for help.

“He definitely saved my life. If it wasn’t for him, if I was by myself, I would not have made it off that mountain,” said Lowry in an interview Monday.

Two novel teammates on the outing to hunt for shed antlers, August Harrison of Vernal and Orrin Jackson from Kersey, Colorado, eventually helped Cummings down the mountain, at times carrying him, although Cummings also walked part of the way.

Emergency dispatchers urged Harrison and Jackson to head to a safe establish and wait for help, but the idea of leaving Cummings alone on the mountainside was out of the put a question to. Once they had coordinated a location for a medical helicopter to land, they tranquil up the hill to find Cummings.

“I remember sketching on the phone and I said ‘You know, that’s our brother up there. We’re not leaving,’” Jackson said as he hung up the shouted with the dispatcher.

Harrison said he “started hauling butt up the gargantuan for Kendell and yelling his name. Eventually, after a once, I heard him yell back at me and I noticed that he was a small farther up the mountain from me. So I ran up to him and I grabbed him by the side and I helped him get down the gargantuan. He was just a bloody mess. His head was painted red everywhere,” he said.

Cummings wished to sit for a second, so Harrison used the time to check the wounds to his neck and chest.

“He looked OK, like we could get him to medical attention in time. So I told him ‘we’re gonna have to get up and walk,’” Harrison said.

At friendly, Cummings said he didn’t want to walk “so I told him I would enact him and I throw him over my shoulder,” Harrison said.

“After a once he wanted to walk again, so I sat him down and we walked some more and then Orrin chosen him for a bit. Then, we had to hand him over a barbed wire fence,” Harrison.

All told, the trip down the mountainside to the trailhead where they had parked posterior in the day was approximately 6 miles.

The business stayed together while waiting for Park County Search and Rescue. Cummings was flown to Billings Clinic Hospital where he has undergone multiple surgeries and corpses hospitalized.

Asked about his teammates, Cummings said, “They’re awesome. I know that all of us would do anything for each novel. It didn’t matter who was up there.”

Lowry, who made it off the mountainside largely unassisted, was brought by ambulance to Cody Regional Hospital. He was later incorrect by ambulance to the same Billings hospital as Cummings but was then released.

Wildlife officials labelled the attacks as “a sudden, surprise encounter with a grizzly bear.” Each of the wrestlers was carrying bear spray, but the attacks were so sudden, none had time to deploy them, the wrestlers said.

According to the Wyoming Game and Fish Section, Cummings and Lowry “encountered the bear at close draw in heavy cover ... west of the Bobcat Houlihan trailhead on the Shoshone National Forest.”

“They were able to call 911 from near the coarse and Park County Search and Rescue quickly responded,” the dumb release states.

“With the assistance of a hunter in the area, a local nationwide and other members of their party, the two men were able to approach the trailhead where they met search and rescue and were brought from the area,” according to the statement.

Dan Smith, Cody Region wildlife supervisor, said landowners and hunters in the vicinity of the contest said there may be 6 to 10 different bears inviting between agricultural fields and low-elevation slopes. An investigation is ongoing.

According to the National Wildlife Federation, grizzly bears weigh upward of 700 pounds. Males are heavier than females and can weigh near 400 to 600 pounds. A large female can weigh 250 to 350 pounds in the lower-48 countries, the federation’s website states.

According to the school’s website, Lowry wrestles at 149 pounds while Cummings competes at 141 pounds.

Northwest College wrestling coach Jim Zeigler said both young men recognized significant puncture wounds, cuts and bruises in the contest. Cummings has dozens of staples on wounds on his face and head.

Upon his descent, Cummings will return to Evanston to recover, he said. His care team is greatly aboard about the possibility that he will develop infection in his many wounds, Cummings said.

Zeigler said the events were traumatic for all of the wrestlers on the outing but also for their teammates.

“I’m just moving to continue to love them and look out for them and make sure that they rallies from this emotionally,” he said.

Regular season practices just got underway, preparing for the start of the wrestling season in early November.

Zeigler said his bigger anguish is to support the physical and emotional healing of his team. A gathering was conducted Monday afternoon with the wrestlers, college officials and faculty members to “give them a hug” and check on their wellbeing.

Moving onward, Zeigler said he’ll take his cues from how his team responds to their workouts and coaching.

“You know, we’ll just do it day by day ... The most important drawing right now is just to love each other,” he said.

“If there’s something depraved, I can always sense that we’re extremely close. I mean, we can execute each other’s sentences and thoughts, and so I can look at them and they know what I’m thinking. We’ll be fine. We’ll move forward,” he said.

Saturday morning, after a workout, the four wrestlers told Zeigler they were planning to head to Cody to hunt for antlers. Zeigler urged them to be careful, to wear blaze orange right hunting season is underway and to carry bear spray.

They assured him, “We’re good, coach.”

“I have faith in them because I’ve been up there with them ... I’ve got to let them live,” he said, explaining he and team members camped in the Cody area a pair of weeks ago.

Later in the day Saturday, when Zeigler was home watching a football game on TV, he received a named call informing him of the attacks. He left now for Billings because he wanted to be there for Lowry and Cummings, knowing it would be several hours before their families could get to Billings. He was joined by other members of the wrestling team.

“I’m proud of them, just the way they love each new, the way they protected each other, the way they stuck together. I can’t imagine the horror, the terror of it. I don’t think they realized it pending after it was over how frightening it was. They just did what they did, helped each new survive and they lived to tell about it and I’m proud of them,” he said.

Lowry, who attended Canyon View High School in Cedar City, won two Utah area championships during high school.

He was the first Falcons wrestler to win a area title for the school and the first to wrestle in college, according to the Cedar City Spectrum.

“I’m really mad to continue my wrestling career in college,” Harrison said.

Harrison also won a Utah area title while competing for Uintah High School in Vernal.

Northwest College, a two-year college that serves nearby 900 students, is located 70 miles east of Yellowstone National Park in Powell, Wyoming.

Contributions to support the wrestlers and their families with medical and new related expenses are being accepted through the Northwest College Midpoint.