A Columbia Falls man says he’ll be keeping bear spray holstered on his hip after a mama grizzly reared on her hinds legs, looked him and a hunting companion over and then charged like a lightning bolt Monday. “I wish I would have been quicker thinking and pulled the bear spray out,” said Ron Krueger of Columbia Falls. “I wish I would have done that looking back at it now.”
The bear spray was on his backpack at the time.
Krueger was hunting Monday with Kevin Maki, a friend from Grand Rapids, Minn., in the Badger-Two Medicine area of Lewis and Clark National Forest east of Marias Pass and south of U.S. Highway 2.
Maki, who was not carrying bear spray, ended up shooting the female grizzly, which was protecting a moose carcass and two cubs of the year. The shot from his rifle stopped the bear in its tracks, but it didn’t immediately kill it.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials found it dead near a tree Tuesday, about 150 yards from the shooting location. The 15-year-old female had two cubs.
“It was neither of our intention to hurt that bear at all,” said Krueger, adding the hunters feel badly that the cubs were orphaned.
Krueger said he learned lessons from the close encounter with the grizzly.
One is that he’ll now be carrying bear spray on his side, not on his backpack, and every member of his hunting party also will carry it.
Source Greatfallstribune.com. Continue reading this article at this LINK…..
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