Montanan mauled by grizzly set to go home

A Montana man who was mauled in September by a grizzly bear that bit off his lower jaw is ready to return home after five weeks at a Utah hospital, a physician and his family said Friday during a news conference.

Rudy Noorlander, who answered most questions at the University of Utah hospital by writing on a whiteboard, is looking forward to having a rootbeer float, reuniting with his Yorkshire terrier Sully, returning to the outdoors and maybe even being able to attend the November football game between the Montana Grizzlies and his beloved Montana State Bobcats.

“And he’s developed a whole new hatred toward the University of Montana,” his daughter Katelynn Noorlander Davis said jokingly, referring to the team’s bear mascot.

Noorlander can speak briefly, but it hurts “a little,” he said. He will need speech therapy, his surgeon, Dr. Hilary McCrary said.

Noorlander said he didn’t want to take questions about the attack because he wants to write a book about it. He says he’d like to have actor Cole Hauser from the “Yellowstone” television series play his character in the movie adaptation.

Noorlander’s adult daughters — Ashley Noorlander and Davis — sat on either side of him during the news conference, recounting the ups and downs of the past five weeks.

Davis read a statement her father wrote, thanking people for the support, love, prayers and kindness he’s received from friends and strangers.

“I truly feel blessed to be surrounded by such amazing people,” Davis said, reading her father’s statement. “I also want to say that the first root-beer float is going to taste so amazing and soon I’m going to be a free-range chicken and won’t be hooked up to anything.”

The family is hoping he’ll be able to return home Monday.

Noorlander was attacked by a grizzly bear on Sept. 8 after joining two people to look for a deer they had shot and wounded. The bear came upon him so quickly he did not have time to deploy bear spray and his gun misfired, according to reports at the time.

The attack happened south of Big Sky, a popular resort area about 55 miles north of Yellowstone National Park, where Noorlander has a business renting all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles. It took several hours for him to be removed from the area by helicopter. He was taken to the hospital in Bozeman, where he underwent a tracheotomy to create an airway, McCrary said. Then he was flown to a hospital in Utah.

On Sept. 28, Noorlander’s jaw and lower lip were reconstructed during a 10-hour operation using a portion of his lower leg bone and transplanted skin, McCrary said.

McCrary said she was amazed by Noorlander’s determination to recover when she met him the day after the attack.

“He was very adamant that he was going to fight this thing and get through it. And at that point, he was still on a ventilator and had a chest tube and lots of lines everywhere,” she said.

Noorlander wrote that his family and life motivated him to keep fighting and declared, “I will win Round 2” with the bear.