A man in the Alaska wilderness was sleep-deprived and nearly out of ammunition after having to fight off a grizzly bear every night for several days by the time a Coast Guard crew flying over the area spotted him waving his arms in distress and his SOS sign.
The crew was flying to Nome for a mission to help a team of scientists search the Alaskan coastline for dead, whales, walruses and seals on Friday, when they saw the man waving both of his hands in the air.
He was standing near a shack with the words 'SOS' and 'help me' sprawled on its tin roof, the Coast Guard reports.
When they landed, they said they noticed the man had a bandage around his leg and suffered from some bruising.
That's when, they said, the man told the crew that he was attacked by a grizzly bear a few days earlier.
He said the bear had since been returning to his shack every night.
'At some point, a bear had dragged him down to the river,' Lt. Commander Jared Carbajal, one of the pilots on the Coast Guard helicopter, told the New York Times.
'He had a pistol,' Carbajal recounted. 'He said the bear kept coming back every night and he hadn't slept in days.'
The man, whom Coast Guard officials did not name, had been staying in the shack in a mining camp 40 miles from Nome, since July 12.
He reportedly did not have a cellphone with him at the time.
It is unclear what the man was doing out there, but officials said his friends had reported him missing when he did not return to Nome.
DailyMail.com has reached out to Coast Guard officials for more information.
A Coast Guard crew en route to Nome, Alaska on Friday spotted a man in a remote mining camp 40 miles from the city (pictured) waving both of his arms in a plea for help
The crew was on its way to Nome, Alaska from Kotzebue when they spotted the man
The man claimed he had been terrorized by a grizzly bear, like the one seen here, who dragged him down to the river and kept coming back to his shack every night for a week
According to the New York Times, the aircrew out of Coast Guard Station Kodiak changed its route to Nome, Alaska from Kotzebue by about a mile to avoid some clouds, when one Lt. AJ Hammac saw the man stumble out of the shack - something he said he is not used to seeing in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where he is based.
'He said,
