The first hint of trouble for the hapless hiking buddies was the sound of something heavy charging through the snow.

Then came the huffing.

And the grunting.

Jeff Hebert, 32, a firefighter, bolted up from his sleeping bag, dropped the Louis L'Amour western he was reading, and grabbed the rifle next to him.

He turned to his sleeping friend.

"Ken, Ken, Ken."

Ken Scown, 36, a forester, had encountered bears before, but nothing like the walloping he was about to face.

Start of that day

That day -- Wednesday -- hadn't gotten off to the best start for the friends from Nelson, B.C.

It was their third day of hunting mule deer and bighorn sheep in Canal Flats in the East Kootenays.

The snow was falling and the fog was thick.

They would have to spend the day in their tent, reading. They were peeved.

Shortly before 10 p.m., Scown put away his book and dozed off.

Hebert kept reading with his headlamp.

That's when he heard something coming at the tent -- fast.

After waking Scown, both men instinctively started to yell.

"Hey, bear, get out of here!"

But it kept getting closer.

Both men threw up their arms against the wall of the tent -- "like it's going to help," Hebert later chuckled in an interview with ctvbc.ca.

They braced themselves.

Fight of their lives

Wooompf.

The tent caved in. The grizzly was on top of them and began gnawing away at Scown.

Scown punched and kicked at the bear through the tent wall.

"You fight for your life," he later told ctvbc.ca.

Hebert, meanwhile, tried pushing the bear away with his left hand, while readying his rifle with his right.

"We didn't know what it was thinking," he said.

"It's like being in a rodeo and being whipped around."

Hebert jabbed the bear with the barrel of the rifle.

The bear turned and sunk its teeth in Hebert's left forearm.

"'Is that all you got,'" Hebert later recalled thinking to himself.

Scown yelled. "Just shoot the bear!"

Hebert hesitated. He didn't want to shoot his friend by accident.

But he went ahead and pressed the barrel against the bear, and fired.

Click.

Nothing happened.

Hebert hadn't pulled the rifle's bolt back far enough to grab a shell out of the magazine.

"There were times when I thought to myself. 'Is this it?'" he said.

But just at that moment, to their amazement -- and relief -- the bear let up.

And just scampered away.

A surprise

The men immediately crawled their way out of the mangled tent, and made a startling discovery.

Two sets of tracks, not one.

They surmised that they had been visited upon by a sow and her cub.

But there was no time to waste. Hebert had a 1 � to 2-inch deep gash to his left arm and was bleeding pretty bad.

Scown had puncture wounds on his right arm. Fortunately, he had been wearing thick layers.

Hebert built a fire while Scown kept watch with his rifle in hand.

They gathered their belongings and trekked five kilometres back to their truck.

Every few hundred yards, they turned around to make sure they weren't being followed.

They didn't stop.

They reached the hospital in Cranbrook at about 3 a.m. and got bandaged up.

Predatory behaviour

Jacques Drisdelle, a B.C.-based bear safety expert, told ctvbc.ca Saturday that bear attacks on people in tents are rare.

"Anybody being attacked in a tent -- that's predatory bear behaviour," he said. "It means the bear was hunting those two individuals with the intent of killing and eating them."

Drisdelle said this is the time of the year when bears are accumulating fat for the winter. He said he would not be surprised if the men did, indeed, encounter a sow and cub.

"It's teaching its young how to hunt," he said.

Drisdelle offered these tips for campers:

Don't place food in your tent.

Don't wear the same clothes that you cooked in.

Avoid bright-coloured tents; bears can be attracted to colours.

Stow bear spray in the tent.

When Hebert got home, his adrenalin was still pumping.

He went to his computer and recounted the story -- pictures and all -- on a hunting website.

"I consider us two VERY VERY lucky fellas," he wrote.

Hebert and Scown -- who go by the nicknames Brambles and Rattler -- say they'll probably head back out into the woods in the next few days.