'I knew that something was watching me. It was the most primitive hatred imaginable, reaching out towards me, seeking to burn me from the face of the earth.'

When British climber David Fletcher set off to explore the remote Hayes group of mountains in Alaska he was warned about soloing so far from rescue. Never could he have imagined that he was about to enter into a battle as fierce as Captain Ahab's legendary contest with the great whale. But this is real life, not fiction, and Fletcher's adversary is the most feared creature in the Alaskan wilderness, a grizzly bear - a 10-foot high, 1200 lb, furious she-bear whose cub he has accidentally killed in a moment of panic. Appalled at his own mistake and full of sorrow for the bear, Fletcher tries desperately to escape, but during the nightmare pursuit that follows he eventually comes to accept that unless he can kill her, she will certainly destroy him.

Hunted is the true story of how the vengeful mother bear, each of her paws as wide as a man's chest and with claws five inches long, stalks her human quarry over the rugged Alaskan terrain, cutting him off from his food supply, nearly cornering him time and time again. Once her claws rake his climbing boots as he hangs from a rope inches above her reach, once she traps him in a crevasse which threatens to collapse in on him under her shifting weight as she reaches to hook him out. The two are partners in a deadly game, a strange intimacy.

Seldom has the remorseless contest between man and beast been so vividly portrayed.

A gripping true story in which beast hunts man

Fascinating account of one of the last great wildernesses where beauty and danger go hand in hand