A hunter who failed to return from a trip in Alaska was mauled to death by a brown bear before his body was found next to a deer carcass.
Tad Fujioka’s body was discovered by Alaska State Troopers at 11:30am on Wednesday after the 50-year-old vanished during a deer hunting trip, the law enforcement agency said.
The authorities were called just after 6pm on Tuesday and a desperate search operation was launched.
‘Investigation revealed he was the likely victim of a fatal bear mauling,’ state troopers said in a daily report of incidents.
Fujioka had killed a deer at the location before he was brutally attacked by at least one brown bear, Tim DeSpain, a spokesman for the Alaska Department of Public Safety said.
Tad Fujioka, 50, was mauled to death by brown bear before his body was found next to a deer carcass in Sitka, in the Alaskan panhandle
Alaska State Troopers knew it was a brown bear that carried out the mauling as that is the only species of bear in the area (stock image)
Investigators confirmed they knew it was a brown bear that killed the Sitka resident as that is the only species of bear in the area, DeSpain added.
‘The area is remote and there are a lot of bears in that area,’ he said.
State troopers and Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials searched for the predator that might have been responsible for the mauling of Fujioka, but they were unsuccessful, DeSpain confirmed.
On Wednesday Alaska Wildlife Troopers, U.S. Coast Guard, and Sitka search and rescue conducted the search in a remote wooded area near Sitka and were transported by a AWT Patrol Vessel and a Sitka SAR vessel.
Sitka is a city with a population of around 8400 in the Alaska panhandle, southwest of Juneau.
Alaska is known for its brown and black bears, which include grizzlies, as well as polar bears.
There are around 100,000 black bears and around 30,000 brown bears in Alaska, the state Department of Fish and Game says on its website.
