A Kenai woman is mauled by a bear on her own front deck

A Kenai woman was seriously hurt Thursday morning when a brown bear sow mauled her on her own front deck — attacked while trying to protect her dog from a bear and two cubs that had climbed her fence.

She'd stepped out before 5 a.m. to let her dogs out and found the sow and cubs already in her yard. One dog made it inside; the other stayed out. She went back for a shotgun and fired several rounds to scare the bears off, but the sow charged her on the deck. Another person at the home ran out shouting, driving the bear away, and got her inside. She was flown to an Anchorage-area hospital.

Troopers found several bird feeders in the yard that the bears had gotten into before the attack — a likely reason they were drawn to the property in the first place. Feeders, and food left accessible, are a well-known way to pull bears into a yard, and the sow still hasn't been found.

The Kenai Peninsula is a genuine hot spot for bear attacks: state data covering 2000 to 2017 found the peninsula accounts for 69% of bear-attack hospitalizations in Alaska's Gulf Coast region — itself nearly half the statewide total.