Dylan McWilliams is a survival training instructor with a difference: he has actual survival experience.

The 20-year-old from Colorado was paddling into the line-up at Shipwreck’s Beach off Poipu at Kauai on Thursday when a tiger shark, believed to be around two metres long, bit his leg:

“I was looking around and saw a bunch of blood.”

Thankfully, he was able to swim roughly 30 metres back to shore despite his gruesome injury.

A bystander then called the paramedics, reports Mirror:

“I didn’t know if I lost half my leg or what,” he said.

“The scariest part was swimming back. There was blood behind me. I didn’t know where it was.”

He received seven stitches in hospital to mend the wound in his right leg:

So another shark attack, right? Sure, but this isn’t McWilliams’ first encounter with such a dangerous animal.

About seven months ago, McWilliams was bitten on the head by a black bear at a Colorado summer camp.

He had to have nine staples in his scalp:

He had been asleep outside when the fearsome bear started biting the back of his head.

“The bear grabbed the back of my head and started pulling me and I was fighting back as best as I could,” he said. “It dropped me and stomped on me a little bit, and I was able to get back to the group and they scared it away.”

Dylan was able to defend himself by punching the bear and poling it in the eye, causing it to loosen its grip.

“I guess I was just in the wrong spot at the wrong time,” he said.

An interview after the incident:

But a few years before that, Dylan had been hiking in Utah when he was bitten by a none other than a rattlesnake.

Serious.

He was sick for around three days. “I don’t know if I’m lucky or just unlucky,” he told news outlets.

But then again, look at what he gets up to in his spare time:

You know what they say, if you play with fire…

[source:telegraph]