Elk hunting is becoming more hazardous.

I have read several accounts of the guide being killed east of Teton National Park last Friday.

Different details are disclosed in different online articles, but the gist is that his bow hunting client hit an elk on Thursday, late enough for the guide to say they would come back on Friday to find it and pack it out.

When they found the elk the next day, there was a sow grizzly and a full-grown cub in the vicinity. There was no evidence that the bears had fed on the elk, but while the two men were going to work on it the sow charged them.

The guide emptied a can of bear spray on her without deterring her, and she bore in and attacked him. The client made it to his horse where he had a pistol. Not getting a clear shot and being afraid of hitting the guide, he threw the pistol in an attempt to get it to the guide. At that, the bear came for him and dragged him off his horse (most accounts don't mention the horse), inflicted non-life threatening injuries on him, and then returned to her attack on the guide.

The client "ran" away, calling for help on his cell phone (again, no mention of the horse--it probably ran for its life). He was evacuated by helicopter, treated at the local hospital, and returned home to Florida a day or two later.

Teams of 4 to 5 Game and Fish Department personnel went into the area and recovered the guide's body on Saturday, the bears having dragged it away from the site of the attack. They also set leg snares to catch and hold any bears in the area so they could be evaluated. They went back in and found one bear in a snare, and while they were approaching it they were charged by a sow and had to shoot her. It turned out these were the same two bears that had been involved in the attack, and even though the younger bear had not engaged in the initial attack on the guide and his client, the evidence showed it had been in contact with the guide's body, so they euthanized it.

The behavior of these bears has some people scratching their heads (maybe we should say "this" bear, because the sow was the only one to attack these two men). As one source reported: "these bears didn't appear to be after the meat and weren't taken by surprise...."

But we can speculate that with more bears out there, and them becoming accustomed to having people around, there will be more encounters. Another source reported that in the greater Yellowstone area: "Wildlife officials killed at least nine grizzlies last year due to livestock attacks. Hunters acting in self-defense killed 15 grizzlies."

One lesson to take from this recent incident is that a guide needs to be armed with a bear-stopping weapon, even in bow season. Game officials might oppose this out of concern that people will kill elk illegally with a gun, but there should be a level of integrity on the part of the guides to avoid this--after all, if they get caught shooting an animal it would be pretty costly for them

From what I have seen, the guides generally don't carry guns even during gun season, although occasionally they will carry a pistol--but for safety sake they need sufficient stopping power to deal with a bear like the one that killed this guide.


Larry