Posted on 08/08/2015 9:39:07 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Elk hunters have reason to hope for grizzly tags. A collaborative study by the Wildlife Conservation Society, the National Park Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and Montana FWP in 2004 indicated that some grizzlies in the Yellowstone ecosystem have learned that where there are elk hunters, there are gut piles to feed on. Researchers found that in September some grizzlies leave the protective boundaries of Yellowstone National Park to feed on carcass remains left by elk hunters, and when they can, they’ll even attempt to claim the entire kill. On a few occasions the encounters have been bloody.
In 2001, Tim Hilston went elk hunting in Montana and never came back. His body was discovered not far from a partially buried elk carcass. Investigators discovered evidence that Hilston was field dressing an elk he’d killed when a grizzly attacked him.
A more typical incident occurred last fall in Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest. Hunters were doing an elk drive when a grizzly crashed out of the brush and tackled Weston Scott of Gillette, Wyo. The bear next came after Aaron Hughes, an Indiana resident. Hughes gunned down the bear at close range.
These are just a couple of grizzly encounters turned bad. According to Servheen, in 2011 alone there were 83 reported incidents in the northern Rockies of grizzlies charging people. Hunters were charged 31 times and hikers 29 times. Fourteen of the encounters resulted in human injuries, and two people were killed.
That is what my husband was just telling me this evening.
He has an old 30-30 that he thinks we should hang onto for that reason....but I think it is too old.
But it was no joke, because a horseback trip got re-routed due to a grizzly kill nearby; and we were refused admittance to a parking area due to an aggressive grizzly in the area.
The formerly huge herd there is considered geriatric and beyond recovery because the newborns rarely survive to one year.
They are horrid. I detest them.
They are damned fearsome creatures.
I remember reading one of the passages from the Stephen Ambrose book “Undaunted Courage”. He talks about the Lewis and Clark expedition, and when they went further west, they began to encounter enormous grizzly bears, the likes of which they had never seen. I don’t doubt this, because being the apex predator that they are, they had probably grown to enormous sizes without a lot of interference from humans.
They made it clear to the Indians who befriended them that they were going to go out and hunt these bears, the Indians were astonished, and communicated to them in every way possible that doing so was an extremely risky and foolhardy endeavor. Apparently, they couldn’t believe these white people were crazy enough to do that.
Lewis and Clark were “undaunted” by the admonitions, and made it clear that they were perfectly confident because of the advanced weaponry that they carried with them, that the Indians did not have… their rifles.
I imagine that if I were there, I could just see the Indians turning to each other and shrugging their shoulders, saying the equivalent of “Well, I guess it’s their ass…”
When they came across a particularly large specimen of these grizzly bears by the side of a river, they set upon it and begin shooting it. The way the story goes as I recall, at one point there were 12 guys firing away with these black powder guns, and ended up throwing down their guns and running into the river to try to escape while this massive grizzly bear chased after them into the water.
I do believe that there was illustration that one of the party had drawn of this incident at the time, and it showed a grizzly bear standing on its hind legs in the middle of a large spread out ring of frontiersmen all firing their weapons in what looked for all intents and purposes like a circular firing squad, except that all their rifles were pointed up at what looked to be at least a 45° angle. The bear, standing erect on its hind legs, with the perspective of the amateur artist looked to be, oh, say, 30 feet tall, with both of its forepaws straight up in the air with claws extended! I think I’ve always been surprised that the artist didn’t make the bear appear to be 100 feet tall, rivaling Godzilla…
What was really funny though, was the dry log entry by one of the guys that basically said “We decided to avoid encountering those types of beasts in the future…”
It reminded me of the other entry later on their journey, when they reached the Columbia River. Now anyone who pays attention to these things knows that the Columbia River in those days was a particularly wild River, so when Lewis and Clark made it clear to the Native Americans out in that area that they intended to take their funny looking (funny looking to the Indians at least) wooden boats down the river, the Indians again must’ve looked at each other in astonishment and said “These pale faced white people are absolutely insane…”
Sure enough, on the day went down the river, there were hundreds and hundreds of Indians lining both sides of the river to watch the spectacle of these white guys completely destroy themselves… it promised to be a real show. This has to be one of the times though, where Lewis and Clark really did know what they were doing, and the Indians were extremely impressed and again, astonished in a positive way, that these guys in their buckskins and funny looking wooden boats actually made it down the boiling white water river.
I’ve always heard .50 cal is the only way to be sure.
Especially for a full grown Grizzly.
Found more at the site below.
https://franceshunter.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/with-a-bear-behind-lewis-clark-meet-the-grizzly-bear/
Thanks for clueing me in!
ROTFLMAO!!
You made Pepsi come out of my nose darn you! :)
Anything but a head shot may kill the bear, but not soon enough to prevent a mauling. And bears have very hard heads when they are charging.
My friend tells me they were three hunters and all three were delivering multiple large game rounds during the charge. The bear died just short of their blind. It’s been a few years since we talked about this. So details are a bit skimpy. Sorry I don’t recall the calibers they were shooting. And this was NOT a grizzly bear.
It will work if you throw it in the bear’s mouth and then detonate it, like “Jaws” and the scuba tank.
Beyond that, gimme bullets for bears.
[which would be a great rock band name, too]
I used to live on the Wa coast, peninsula, black bears are everywhere though, but rarely involved in an altercation. However in a city called Ilwaco Washington, a tiny port near the mouth of the Columbia river, they are also breaking into cars in very residential areas. Apparently they can smell a large crumb of food or french fry that got left in a car.
Excellent.
So what did he use in the second video link I posted above?
fta... While the exact cause of death has not been determined, investigators have identified what appear to be defensive wounds on the victim’s forearms. The victim’s body was found partially consumed and cached, ...
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Idiots! He was killed by a BEAR! Why say cause undetermined? He worked and hiked in the area for years, so it’s unlikely that he died of natural causes, particularly since there were defensive wounds on his arms.
I know a few bears over the years that just shrug it off. That’s why I don’t carry it. I carry a 45-70.
More gun education please if you would be so kind...
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