|
|
|||||||
Really good article on Grizzly Bears... https://www.outdoorlife.com/hunting-grizzly-bears-necessary-conservation#page-7 Excerpt of article: Deep in the Teton Wilderness, near the southeast corner of Yellowstone National Park, Bond Isaacson, a 30-year-old hunter from North Carolina, loaded quarters from his first elk onto a packhorse with the help of his guide. The horse spooked. When Isaacson looked up, a big sow grizzly stood less than 20 yards away. “Hey, bear!” the guide yelled, frantically waving his arms. “Git bear! Git!” Isaacson’s hunting partner waved and hollered too. The grizzly popped its jaws and stepped toward them. The guide had no sidearm. The second hunter’s rifle was 10 yards away, leaning against a stump. The bear circled downwind. Now the three men stood between the grizzly and the elk carcass. Isaacson drew his .300 Win. Mag. from a scabbard on the packhorse. With a shaky voice he asked, “What should I do?” “Give it a warning shot,” the guide said, and Isaacson put a round in the dirt a few inches from the grizzly’s front claws. Then the bear charged. “Shoot it!” the guide yelled. “Shoot it!” The second shot toppled the grizzly midrun. She dropped 8 yards from the three men—and one freaked-out horse. Mike Deming, editor of Sportsman’s News and a family friend of Isaacson’s, had helped plan the hunt and was with Isaacson in camp. He wasn’t there during the attack, and he was curious to see the scene for himself. So the next day, Deming hiked a ridgeline to glass the area around Isaacson’s kill. He spotted a big boar grizzly feeding on the elk carcass and three smaller bears waiting their turn. The Isaacson/Deming party saw more than a dozen grizzlies on their seven-day elk hunt. They camped on the fringe of Yellowstone National Park, after a 19-hour horseback ride into the backcountry, near where the Teton and Washakie Wilderness areas meet. A mother and two cubs were run from camp nightly with 12-gauge flashbang rounds. A fourth bear wandered into a hunter’s tent. Deming has hunted and killed three brown bears in Alaska and Canada, and more than 30 black bears throughout a lifetime hunting the West. He’s not the kind of guy who spooks easily. “But hunting near Yellowstone scares the living crap out of me,” he says. “Bears are everywhere.” The grizzly Isaacson shot was the 33rd recorded bear death in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in 2017. By the end of the year, 56 grizzlies made the list. "Wyoming has contributed more than $50 million, more than any other single state or agency, to the grizzly conservation effort. That money comes almost exclusively from Pittman-Robertson funds, which are raised from an excise tax on ammunition, firearms, and archery equipment." |