Karl Puckett

kpuckett@greatfallstribune.com

A Columbia Falls man says he’ll be keeping bear spray holstered on his hip after a mama grizzly reared on her hinds legs, looked him and a hunting companion over and then charged like a lightning bolt Monday.

“I wish I would have been quicker thinking and pulled the bear spray out,” said Ron Krueger of Columbia Falls. “I wish I would have done that looking back at it now.”

The bear spray was on his backpack at the time.

Krueger was hunting Monday with Kevin Maki, a friend from Grand Rapids, Minn., in the Badger-Two Medicine area of Lewis and Clark National Forest east of Marias Pass and south of U.S. Highway 2.

Maki, who was not carrying bear spray, ended up shooting the female grizzly, which was protecting a moose carcass and two cubs of the year. The shot from his rifle stopped the bear in its tracks, but it didn’t immediately kill it.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials found it dead near a tree Tuesday, about 150 yards from the shooting location. The 15-year-old female had two cubs.

“It was neither of our intention to hurt that bear at all,” said Krueger, adding the hunters feel badly that the cubs were orphaned.

Krueger said he learned lessons from the close encounter with the grizzly.

One is that he’ll now be carrying bear spray on his side, not on his backpack, and every member of his hunting party also will carry it.

He also learned that the spray doesn’t necessarily have to directly hit a bear.

“You just need to lay down a protective veil,” Krueger said. “That will often deter it if you get that veil out in front of them. It doesn’t have to be a direct splash in the face.”

Maki and Krueger had hunted in the same area for the past four years.

The shooting occurred a mile east of Trail 133, along a major gas pipeline that parallels Highway 2.

“There’s a lot of bear up there, but it’s a good chance to get an elk up there,” he said.

This year alone, they’ve seen five grizzly bears, a couple of moose and a wolf, but no elk, Krueger said.

On Monday, the hunters were quietly walking through dark lodgepole pine, into the wind, hoping to jump an elk, when Krueger saw brown to his right 150 feet away. He thought maybe it was a bedded-down elk before recognizing a grizzly.

Usually, grizzlies run the other way, Krueger said.

“This time we were too close, so I immediately started yelling, “Hey bear! Hey bear! Hey bear!”

The bear stood on its hind legs and looked at the hunters for about 10 seconds.

“Then it dropped down and zoomed right at us,” Krueger said. “I’ve been in that situation before and always they veer off at the last second. This one was different. It was getting faster and faster and faster.”

Both men had their guns aimed at the bear. Maki shot when the grizzly got within 30 feet.

Krueger says he wished he would have had been “quicker thinking” in pulling out the bear spray, and that the spray was in a more accessible location. But the charge happened so fast, he added.

“It’s kind of a traumatic situation when you have a bear attacking you like that,” he said.

After the shooting, the men retreated to their truck and called a FWP warden.

“We both carry it now for sure,” Krueger said of bear spray.

Since the close call, the men are now hunting in an area where there are fewer bears to contend with.

Mike Madel, a grizzly bear management specialist with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said the sow’s cubs are not considered a threat.

“Our hope is they survive and are able to hibernate on their own,” Madel said.

The cubs will be a year old in January, having been born in the den last winter.

The female weighed about 215 pounds and was naturally small, Madel said. She was in moderate condition with some fat, but not what would be expected, Madel said. Her front claws were worn, an indication she had been digging for roots and other food.

Over the past 10 years, more than a half dozen grizzly bear-hunter encounters have occurred in the Badger-Two Medicine, which is two miles from Glacier National Park, Madel said.

The area has one of the highest densities of grizzly bears east of the Continental Divide, with a grizzly every eight miles, compared to the average of one bear per 20 miles east of the Divide.

In the fall, the bears dig for roots, mushrooms and other food, and also look for protein, such as elk gut piles left behind by hunters.

“They will claim those and try to defend them,” Madel said.

In this case, a moose carcass was in the area.

This hunting season, more hunters are in the Badger-Two Medicine because it’s the first time Hunting District 415 is open to either-sex elk hunting for five weeks instead of one week, Madel said.

He recommends that hunters carry a can of bear spray, which he says is more effective than a firearm.

“They lose a couple of their primary senses, and smell is one of the major ones,” Madel said of how the spray works on the bears. “All they want to do is flee and get away from that painful stimuli which bear spray is basically impregnating them with.”

Hunters put themselves and possibly others at more risk if they use a firearm on a charging bear because there’s a good chance they’ll miss, or wound the bear, Madel said. If the bear is wounded and runs off, it can be a threat to others, and FWP officials have to track them, he said.

With bear spray, accuracy isn’t as critical because the can sprays a wall of fog, said Madel, noting the spray can even be effectively used by a hunter who falls to the ground.

Madel said he’s getting many questions from hunters about using bear spray in the wind. Bear spray can be sprayed into the wind because the can is pressurized and the fog comes out with force, he said.

Reach Tribune Staff Writer Karl Puckett at 406-791-1471, 1-800-438-6600 or kpuckett­@greatfallstribune.com. Twitter: @GFTrib_KPuckett.

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Moose carcass was poached /3A