Photo: The Canadian Press

A B.C. man's beachcombing trip turned into a harrowing fight for survival against a grizzly bear that flailed him around "like a puppet."

Randal Warnock, 57, said he was walking on Brown Island on B.C.'s central coast for about 15 minutes Monday when a bear suddenly appeared.

"I heard a noise behind me, like a cracking sound out of the bush, and this bear was charging full bore out of the bush and was on me in a couple of seconds," he said Friday.

The bruiser began biting at Warnock's legs, shredding his jeans at the knees, then latching onto his right knee.

"I tried to grab my knife out of my back pocket to hit him in the head or something or fend him off, but I dropped (it)," Warnock said. "I thought, 'fight back, fight back.'"

That's when Warnock decided to punch the bear in the nose.

"He let go and stood back (on) two feet, just looking at my legs. He seemed high on adrenalin. It was like a video on high speed, it was just so amazingly fast," he said.

"His head was bobbing around and he looked like he was going to lunge at me. I grabbed a log and was going to throw it at his head, but it slipped out and landed between us and then he just turned around and ran off."

When the bear left, Warnock said he hobbled to his skiff to get to his boat, leaving behind a bloody trail.

He bandaged himself up on his boat as he headed toward the nearest hospital in Port Hardy and called the Canadian Coast Guard, which sent a couple of vessels that arrived two hours later.