The hunting guide who got killed last year died while field dressing an elk. His client had shot the elk the night before the altercation. They started tracking it again the next morning. They were working on the elk, when a mother grizzly and junior showed up. When you dress out an elk it’s a bloody taxing job. The natural thing would be lean your rifle against a tree have your client hold a leg get your knife out and go to work. By the time mom and junior showed up blood smell and elk smell is heavy. It seems to me to be the perfect storm. Bear spray was found on the bears fur. I doubt she noticed it. Extreme caution is needed in the spring to, it was a long winter, they’re hungry and cranky. Mom and the kids are doubly dangerous.
I was up in Alaska doing some work - carried bear spray and a shotgun. I was working my way up a small creek through some thick brush and smelled what to me smelled like a barn full of old, musty hay. I thought that was odd and didn’t seem right - and figured I had collected enough data and headed back.
Got back to where the bear watcher (with a rifle) was watching the other guys and told him.
“That was a bear. They killed an elk up the creek aways. The elk’s stomach smells like that with the grass they eat. But the elk is another thousand feet up the creek, so I doubt you smelled him. The bears will get pretty covered in it though when eating.”