SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — Rudy Noorlander waited to tell his story until he had his voice back.

More than a year and a half after he was mauled by a grizzly bear, Noorlander shared his account of the attack with his newly reconstructed jaw at the University of Utah Health in Salt Lake City. He had previously refused to discuss the attack publicly because he wanted to be able to share it himself.

On Sept. 8, 2023, in Big Sky, Montana, Noorlander said he was hiking through the trees to meet up with a father and son who needed help tracking a deer they had wounded when hunting the day before. As he is a good tracker, he volunteered to join them in the search.

While hiking to a meeting spot, Noorlander spotted a small bear, which quickly ran away, prompting him to pull out his gun. He then met up with the father and son and began moving toward some crows circling above in search of the deer. That’s when he was suddenly attacked.

“We got a ways down the hill and I stepped over a log, looked over to see where Jordan was, and there the bear was coming at me,” he said.

Noorlander said he shot toward the bear, but his gun misfired, leaving him with his backup plan of punching the bear in the nose. He said he remembers “his fist was the same size as [the bear’s] nose.”

“Next thing I remember was he had me by the jaw, and I think he picked me up off the ground … and then he clamped down and I could feel my jaw break. I don’t remember any sound,” Noorlander said. “I don’t remember George yelling … I don’t remember the bear growl, I don’t remember hearing the bear running at me, I just remember hearing the crunch.”

He said the bear stepped on his chest and bit his leg. His friends said they were unable to shoot the bear because it was “shaking [him] around like a rag doll” and they didn’t want to accidentally shoot him. Eventually, they were able to chase the bear away.

“I’m glad that it happened to me because if I hadn’t been there, the father would’ve been the closest to the bear … And I just don’t know that the son would have been enough to chase the bear away,” he said.

It took rescuers two hours to get to them, and Noorlander said he was conscious the whole time. He was eventually transported to the U of U Health facility, where doctors worked with him for more than a year to reconstruct his jaw. He was able to go home to Montana during that time and work, but returned late last year to get another surgery done.

“I knew my jaw was gone … So I knew there wasn’t much there to work with, and I just think they did an amazing job,” Noorlander said.

Health officials said at the Friday conference that he didn’t have teeth for over a year. Different specialists spoke on how they reconstructed the missing part of the bone, worked to contour the skin, added tooth implants, and constructed a lower lip, among other things. They called the process “groundbreaking” as they used virtual surgical planning to map it all out.

“I think it was two weeks ago, I ate my first piece of pizza like a normal person,” Noorlander said.

Noorlander doesn’t consider himself a hero — saying he didn’t do anything to protect someone else — but his attitude has impacted many who have witnessed his story.

“The minute I met Rudy, it was very obvious that he was so willing to do whatever it takes to get through this. He had such a positive attitude, and I will say that I would find it hard for me to do that,” Dr. Hilary McCrary said. “It was immediately obvious that Rudy was an exceptional patient.”

Noorlander attributes his ability to stay positive to his religious faith and his job in outdoor adventure. While he joked that he would like to bite the bear back, he made it a point to say the bear was likely as surprised by the encounter as he was.

“You can always look at your life or wherever you’re at, and say, well, why can’t this happen yet? … You know, everything in your life could be better, but you could turn around and everything in your life could be worse too,” he said.