This report from the Bozeman Daily Chronicle today serves as yet another reminder that you still need to be bear smart when out and about - these two bear attacks were “in the neighborhood”….

LIVINGSTON - Grizzly bears attacked bow hunters in two Park County locations Saturday, according to the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

One man was injured and a grizzly bear probably was killed in the attacks.

“Just when you think you’ve seen it all, then you get a double,” said Kevin Frey, the bear management specialist for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks who investigated both incidents. “It’s not a good deal.”

FWP did not immediately release the names of any of the people involved in either incident.

The first occurred early Saturday, in the Beattie Gulch area just north of the Yellowstone National Park. A female grizzly with three cubs mauled a bow hunter from Whitewater. He is being treated at Livingston Memorial Hospital.

 In that incident, three young men were hunting elk. Two were about 15 yards apart, Frey said, and the man in front was hiding behind some sage brush while his companion used a cow call, trying to attract elk.

The man in front then saw grizzly bears walking toward him, with three cubs in the lead. They passed the man at close distance.

“He could have about touched her,” Frey said.

The mother then evidently saw or smelled the man and attacked, knocking him down a small incline. Man and bear struggled a bit, Frey said, and the man grabbed the bear by the face before remembering a friend’s advice to play dead. The bear bit him on the leg and shoulder, and delivered a glancing blow to his head.

Then his companion advanced and fired a shot with a .45 caliber pistol, but it appears he missed.

Frey said he and FWP Warden Captain Sam Sheppard followed the bear family’s tracks through mud, snow and brush.

“Crawling through there, we couldn’t find any blood on the grass or sagebrush,” he said.

“The odds are pretty high” that this is the same bear that attacked Belgrade bowhunter Dustin Flack in the same area Sept. 13, Frey said. Females with cubs tend to have small home ranges and the circumstances between Saturday’s attack and Flack’s attack are very similar: The bear passed both men within a few feet before attacking.

Frey said he didn’t think the bear was hunting elk Saturday, or she wouldn’t have allowed the cubs to precede her.

None of those hunters had bear pepper spray with them.

State and federal officials advise bow hunters to carry bear spray, but in the second grizzly incident Saturday, the spray didn’t appear to do much good.

That incident occurred about 1:30 p.m. in the Tom Miner Basin, about 14 miles west of Beattie Gulch.

A group of four elk hunters from Pennsylvania had split up and two were following elk tracks in 15 inches of fresh snow in the Sunlight Creek area. The man in the lead told Frey he saw movement in the woods, then realized a grizzly was charging him. He grabbed his bear spray and unloaded most of the canister into the bear’s face.

The spray turned the bear, which had approached to within five feet, but not permanently. She moved about 15 feet away then spun on her heels and came back for another charge. By that time, the man’s companion had pulled a .44 magnum pistol from under his coat. He fired twice and apparently killed the bear, Frey said.

The men saw the bear roll down a hill and lie down, and its 1- or 2-year old cub was “huffing and puffing and squawking in excitement,” he said.

To avoid any encounters with the cub, Frey and his crew decided to wait until today to investigate the scene.

These incidents mark the fourth and fifth serious bear encounters in Yellowstone or in the Montana section of the greater Yellowstone area since May.

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