Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Grizzlies shut down popular Montana hunting area

Lennie: I have seen Grizzled Bears in that area several times in the past.
A few years ago I even witnessed a Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks crew "unloading" (dumping!) a Grizzly Bear from a trailered trap there in the Gravelly's!
Sadly that unloading (dumping!) of a Grizzly Bear was within sight of a large flock of domestic sheep being tended to by a Basque sheep herder as well as my travel companion and myself.
Big Game guide I know was so troubled by Grizzlies near there, last year, that he loaded up his camp and clients and left the area!
He told me he had seen at least 11 different Grizzly Bears in less than a week and some of them more than once!
It was just to dangerous for him and his dudes to camp/Hunt Elk/Deer there!
And that is saying something.
He also relayed to me that the Bears were "fearless"!
Not good, this.
I think a Hunting season, on the now "fearless" Grizzlies, would do some good and cut down on the Bear inflicted injuries/deaths of humans.
Beautiful country there that is closed now - sad.
I actually saw a Grizzly Bear chasing a small herd of Elk in that area several years ago.
Hoping no more humans are munched!
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

News Flash, grizzlies are wild, free, and eat elk. They are also at the top of the food chain, do what they were created to do, and I’m happy for that... Wilderness is not the same without them. I’ll also be happy for their numbers to be thinned down a bit with a limited draw hunt, but I won’t be the one pulling the trigger. I have no desire to do so, though I won’t begrudge someone else the opportunity.

After all it is Montana. I would love to hunt one.

If you don’t like grizzlies on the landscape I would suggest you move somewhere more civilized.

Only in the Lesser 48 could a grizzly bear shut down a hunting area.

I’ll pass on bow hunting an area with 20 griz snacking on cow carcasses. It’s a big state and there’s better ways to die.

Most of us would like to see one hunt you.

Major New Flash:
If evolution is true grizzlies lost in the struggle for existence. If creation is true grizzlies lost in the struggle for existence. Why do do-gooders go against nature and reintroduce them?

My guess is that fearless Apex predators to the extent we see them today is a product of recent times. By many accounts the Indians kept pretty messy camps that must have reeked of food odors, yet one does not read of their camps been regularly stormed by hungry bears.

I’m inclined to think that most bear/human interactions back then usually worked out badly for the bear, getting stuck by arrows even if not immediately fatal, can’t have been a good thing. The bravest Indians even went out of their way to pick fights with grizzly bears in the same way that over in Africa Masai warriors would go out and pick fights with adult male lions.

Surely the 20 grizzly bears in question are in serious need of an attitude adjustment.

I hunted that area for 20 years and the last couple years I was out the griz really gotten brazen. One older gentleman from the area told me when he was young the only part of a griz you would ever see was his hind end because the bear was hightailing out of there when it caught a whiff or sight of a human. They need to regain that fear with a season on them.

Not vs Man with a rifle who can shoot. MAN is at the top of the food chain.


Jerry

If they become a problem - S S S

This

Eastern tenderfeet are funny.

Its real simple, don't hunt around dead cows.

Have to turn off add blocker to read the article.

That's a pretty common misconception... a season doesn't "educate" bears, or put fear in them. It just kills the few that can be harvested. Bears can't log-on to the internet and read hunting regs.

Again, I'm happy they're here, but would also like to see their numbers reduced slightly.

So all the intervention we humans do in nature to undo population loss due to our own activities is a waste of time? We obviously shouldn't have reintroduced elk, bighorn sheep, mountain goats... we should have just shot them into oblivion like the bison, then turned on to something else to destroy? Of course we shouldn't have preserved wild lands, we should have just mined, logged, farmed those lands... after all, we're the top predator, and we can do what we like, right?

Yeah, phug all those "do-gooders"...

How does a season on many other species work to introduce fear of man? Most critters in Yellowstone show almost no fear of humans. I saw a guy at the grand canyon hugging an elk. Lots of urban deer have little fear of people.

Do they have as much trouble with grizzlies in places where they are hunted? With the very limited numbers of bears that would be harvested it might take quite a while. And it would probably also help if we had more ways to deal with problem bears.

Anyone that has hunted for any length of time has observed how animals seem to sense a person in what I call "predator mode." Not sure how animals know a person with a bow or gun is seeking their life, but they seem to know.

Again, individual bears spread out over thousands of square miles getting "educated" by a season defies reason. An individual bear may sense you intend to take its life, and when it's done, how does this education he just experienced prior to his death spread to other bears?

There's some folks over the hill to the West of that area that better hope those bears don't get a hankerin' for Buffalo!