They say a dog is ma’s best friend, but a 44-year-old outdoorsman who was stranded in the Quebec wilderness for months reportedly ate his beloved dog to survive after a bear attack left him without any resources.
Marco Lavoie was knocking on death’s door when he was rescued from the woods on Wednesday. He had lost about 90 pounds, was suffering from dehydration and hypothermia, and could barely speak or eat.
Lavoie had reportedly left for a solo three-month canoe trip near James Bay in mid-July. Police said they believe a bear attacked sometime in August and ate all his food and destroyed his boat.
“He survived because he made good decisions. Eating his dog was one of them,” survival expert Andre Francois Bourbeau said in an interview with QMI.
Temperatures in the area had dipped well below freezing, and Lavoie would have starved to death if he had been stranded another day or two, authorities told the Montreal Gazette.
“In these parts, there’s a subculture of people who go on these long trips into the middle of nowhere but sometimes we forgot how dangerous it can be,” Gérald Lemoine, the mayor of a small town near Matagami, told the Montreal Gazette.
As of Friday, Lavoie was hospitalized and in “very serious” condition.