Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada Hunting Tragedy

Toutle native Jeff Cooper had hunted all his life, but there was one game prize that had eluded him: a grizzly bear.

Sunday night, at a remote location in Northern British Columbia, he came close to realizing the dream when he shot and wounded a grizzly. The next morning, he and two hunting guides tracked it down.

The angry bear charged out of some brush to attack. Cooper and the two guides, reacting instantly, all fired and dropped the bear. Tragically, though, Cooper was standing in front of one of the guides, and a bullet struck and killed him, according to his family.

Cooper had been out to the Burns Lake area of Canada last fall but failed to bag a bear, said his wife of 27 years, Shirley Cooper. So he returned there May 23 � his 59th birthday � to try again.

Her husband was an avid outdoorsman, she said Thursday.

�It was his passion. He just loved being out in the woods. He hiked. He hunted. He fished,� she said.

Doug Fields of the Cowlitz County Chaplaincy told her of her husband�s death Tuesday after local authorities were notified by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which is investigating the incident.

Cooper said her husband grew up in Toutle and was a 1973 graduate of Toutle Lake High School, where he played basketball and football. He owned and operated a specialty sawmill in Toutle known as South Fork Hardwoods and is well-known throughout the Toutle community, Cooper said.

They are members of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Castle Rock.

�He was a wonderful person. He would help anyone. He was a good Christian,� Shirley Cooper said.

She said her husband raised her two children, now grown, as his own. One of them, Josh King, said Thursday his father had a lifelong dream to bag a grizzly.

�He loved to hunt, and that was a great challenge,� he said. He said his father was going to have a rug made of the bear hide and his family may still act on those wishes, he said.

The family last heard from Cooper as he was crossing the U.S./Canada border on his way up to Burns Lake on May 23. The area where he died is a 12-hour drive north of the border, King said. Shirley Cooper is making arrangements to have her husband�s body brought home and expects that to happen Friday.

Tragic for sure.
If there is anything to dying doing something you love, it sounds as though he did. Still tragic.

I was wondering what happened, it's tragic when accidents like this happen. RIP Jeff Cooper.

Yep, RIP, Jeff.

Sad for sure.
RIP Jeff.

Worse than being dead is living with the memory of killing a friend...

I think if I ever did that I would give up hunting and shooting forever.

That's a hard thing to live with. I hope that guide can make peace with it, and that Jeff's family is ok. Sounds like their faith is helping them cope with his passing.

He did die hunting, and getting his bear, but it's sad that he didn't get to celebrate and brag.