Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Grizz are Once Again Denning on the Plains

Are estimates low? More than a 1000 bears?

I don't know but fish and game did a study where they collected bear hair off of barbed wire and if I remember right, they came up with a population number that was t even half of that 1000 they are saying now...with as easy as it is to just drive out of town and see them with regularity in the summer, I'd say there is more than 1000

I hope you get a season there soon, grizzlies need to be hunted so they stay in in line.

I wouldn't hold your breath, the grizzly anti- hunting lobby in MT would/will be epic should the numbers get out of control.

It sounds like they nearing that already.

Wow, just wow.
Try telling a sow that's charging a rancher that she should be "scared" when the rancher stumbles between her and her cubs when he's out mending fence for God's sake.

Your romantic view of the grizzly on the prairie belongs in a print or watercolor.

And you must phez hunt with some real winners too....

I've been around grizzlies since I was a little kid, and saw how their attitude around people changed very quickly after Montana lost it's hunting season in the early 1990's.

Have also been around them considerably in Canada in areas where they're hunted, and where they're not. There is a world of difference in their behavior. Have had to put two warning shots at the feet of a bear in a part of British Columbia that hadn't had a season for several years--because the bunny-huggers were convinced there weren't enough bears for a season. Aside from the encounter with the bear that required a couple .300 warnings, had another bear try to come in while my guide and I were butchering my moose. Didn't have to shoot, but would have--and ended up finishing the butchering with my rifle slung under my chest, so it was handy.

A hunting season in Montana would make a BIG difference in bear/human encounters. Would it totally prevent bears hurting people? No, it would not, but nothing would totally prevent that short of totally exterminating them, and that isn't going to happen.

I also know ranchers along the Rocky Mountain Front in Montana who've had to deal with grizzlies, including one who had several calves and sheep killed by a big boar. Luckily, the boar was fitted with a radio collar, so it was easy for the USFWS to give it a "Weatherby injection." I also jumped a grizzly while hunting pheasants in the Flathead Valley in the late 1970's with my black Lab, which was interesting, though luckily nothing serious occurred. Have also run into them many other places in Montana, Alaska and Canada, both when hunting and not. Have slept many times in a tent with my rifle right beside me, because grizzlies were hanging around camp--including nosing outside the tent at night.As I stated on a previous post on this this thread, have been bluff-charged twice in one morning by sows with cubs while on Kodiak Island. I have hunted them in Alaska twice, killing one, and would like the chance to hunt them again here in Montana.

My post was meant to explain the various realities of a grizzly season in Montana, as related to dens on the plains. Apparently since I didn't say we should wipe them all out you interpret my attitude as "romantic." I've been considered a pretty good communicator with the written word for a few years now, but apparently my skills failed me.

If we were going to go back to Lewis and Clark we'd need to dry out the reservations and turn the indians loose to do their worst. No legal repercussions. I'm not for that either.

I'm in the camp they're a neat critter. And tags should be OTC.

When I first started hunting big game in the 1960's, anybody who held a Montana hunting license could shoot a black bear or grizzly, though when a grizzly was taken you had to report the kill and pay a $25 fee not required for black bear. Can't remember when that changed, but the season was year-round for both kinds of bear.

By the time the Montana grizzly season was shut down in the early 1990's, the general season was two weeks in October, but there was a limit on the total numbers of bears that could be killed in the state. This included those killed because they were eating livestock, plus those killed by accident. Quite a few in those days were killed by trains and highway vehicles along the pass around the southern edge of Glacier Park, because many grain cars spilled wheat and corn along the railroad.

There were problems with bears along the Rocky Mountain Front killing livestock even then, and the director of the Montana game department decided to open a spring season, on a draw basis with 50 tags awarded. This was modeled on an Alberta season that opened very early in spring, when mature boars came out of their dens. Those were the bears that caused most of the livestock problems, and the Alberta season eliminated 3-4 problem bears each year.

The Montana season did the same thing. The 50 tags awarded resulted in four bears taken, as I recall, all big boars. (I put in but didn't draw.) But the season only lasted one spring due to lawsuits from various greenie organizations. A federal court ruled there hadn't been an environmental impact statement done before the season was held, and the ruling also shut down the fall season. Hopefully the homework being done now will allow another season to open, maybe both in fall and spring.

That would be awesome. (spring and fall seasons)

No, they didn't fail you. Even my dumbazz figured out what you meant.

I hope when we do get to hunt them they'll be enough tags to make a difference in the attitude towards people of the general bear population. I'm afraid they'll be so few tags it'll only impact bears that are killed.

But getting them off the list will also free up some options for dealing with problem bears.

This Grizz news does not bode well for a bunch of us horsemen who trailer our horses to Montana two or three times a year.

A couple of things to consider going forward.

1) Bring the fastest horses.

2) Scabbards full of shotguns with slugs.

Dumbazz indeed.


I never advocated "wiping them all out"...but wanting them in vast numbers on the plains next to ranches, towns and the populace is lunacy.

Some of us have lived with them and hunted next to them for a long time, long enough to know that grizzlies don't mix with modern day America in the plains setting.

You guys dreaming of tags are nuts. Other state F&G agencies in their infinite wisdom will likely move these MT nuisances to their own doorsteps before 'prairie draw tag number 1' is ever auctioned or raffled.

Moving on...

I'm afraid you are correct, but I hope Muledeer is right about a well-crafted season being a reality.

The next "grizzly war" will be establishing a travel corridor between the Yellowstone and Bob Marshall bear populations. That should be interesting.

Well a season should be crafted before someone gets hurt.

Stating the obvious, but when grizzlies get out of their traditional mountain or remote forest setting tragedy often/usually follows for livestock, people, property or the bears themselves.
Wolves (hunted or not) possess a timidity of man that bears don't often have. Old boars may avoid town, but young ones will not. Sows with hungry cubs may hit the trash and livestock ranches as well.

Without fear of man bears with their uncanny smell and opportunistic nature will take what they can with as little effort as possible, and it means contact with humans, many ill-equipped to deal.

Lots of good posts above, especially MD's. I've had a permanent home outside Soldotna, on a wooded hilltop just a quarter mile from the Kenai River. The hilltop is a preferred daytime bedding area for fishing brown bears in-season. They are through or by my yard on an almost daily basis. I found one bedded under the bow of the boat, 30 yards outside the bedroom window one evening (it was raining hard). The morning after I poured my sidewalk, there were 10 inch muddy tracks down the length of it. It apparently preferred that to walking thru the muddy garden... I've had 'em on my deck (clean your grill after use!), in the back of the pickup (don't leave garbage in it overnight!), and a sow with 2 year old triplets ripped the end off the dog kennel (I didn't get to cleaning up that moose head in time). Problems of my own making.

I've had year old cubs try to approach my furiously barking Lab who kept backing away. I was 30 feet behind the dog, backing away, the cubs were 15 feet from the dog, with mom 30 feet behind the cubs, all the time both of us telling the cubs to get the hell back in the woods where they belonged. Mom very carefully did not make eye contact with me the whole time. We both knew if she did she would have to do something about it, and I'd have to beat her to death with my garden trowel.

After the first couple years, and several bear encounters there, I quit worrying about my kids. The bears, on the other hand, were on their own...

Sam is coming from the perspective of a stockman, so that is legit opinion. I don't have to worry about that.

Bears are eating machines, and will go where the food is - apparently there is still enough food out on the plains (excluding stock), that the bears are filling in their former habitat.

The hair/barbed wire/DNA technique is likely the best way to determine bear populations. After years of claiming there were only 300-400 brown bears on the Kenai Peninsula (using a Montana model in different habitat, and arial snow tracking in the early winter
), when everyone - including the biologists- knew better, funding was obtained for the hair study. Sure enough, they came up with double that number, which I suspect is still a bit conservative.

I've not tried it personally, but if time and circumstances (and nerves) allow, I suspect #6 12 Ga. pheasant loads at 10 feet and closing would be an effective bear deterrent.

Besides, we have way more people than bears... (I couldn't resist.. )

Tho I've had several encounters of the turd knd over the last 40 plus years in Alaska, the only bear I've "had" to shoot was a 200 pound black that came in on our moose meat. That was probably because I killed a bull 100 yards or so from where someone had killed one the previous weekend... Just more meat in the meat-pile to make up for the few bites and ripped game bags. Besides, he wasn't going away, so....

My bear experience is zero and that's fine with me....grin



We are located hundreds of miles east of the area in question so at this time grizzlies are not a concern what so ever. Of course we used to think the same thing about wolves but now they are in the country(very limited numbers).


Our cows Winter on a stretch of the Missouri River. And according to stories the same stretch of river where ol' Lewis and Clark got into a tangle with a prairie grizzly.


Times changed and now the same country doesn't have enough 'room' for grizzlies. It's just the way it is.

Of course my 'Californiafied' aunt and uncle probably think it would be fine but in reality it would be a mess. Of course they don't think about the consequences and obviously wouldn't have to deal with it so no big deal to them.



Couple years ago we had way too many whitetail deer. Aunt and uncle commented that 'too bad you don't have any wolves'.


I almost punched the dumb [bleep] right in his wormy little face.


Haven't got a Christmas present since.....grin!

SO, the Griz presents a new sport opportunity for you.

Charles Russell - Roping a Grizzly.

Griz

Roundoak, I do believe that painting was 'taken' over by Great Falls somewhere.


My dad knows the story. He knows someone who is related to one of cowboys that was there when it supposedly occurred.


I'll have to ask him the details this morning.



Classic CMR!

Would be interested in the details.

If I recollect, I learned the pic scene was on the Long X ranch up by Malta along the Fourchette Creek. Course my recollection may be lacking.