In what is becoming a familiar scenario this fall, a Wyoming hunter said having his 10 mm pistol locked and loaded saved him and his father from a grizzly mauling in the Meeteetse area.
“There was just no time. If I didn’t have one in the chamber, that bear would have been on us,” Garrett Kalkowski told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday.
He said he shot and killed a female grizzly with his Glock 10 mm pistol after it burst from the timber about only 4 yards away from he and his father Vince on Oct. 3.
Familiar Story
Kalkowski’s grizzly encounter mirrors other instances of hunters shooting grizzlies in self-defense in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.
On Sept. 26, Blue Ridge, Georgia resident Landon Clement was charged by a female grizzly with two large cubs while he was archery hunting in the Upper Green River Basin near Pinedale.
Clement, who was also packing a 10 mm Glock, shot the female grizzly to death, although the bear managed to bite his thigh, leaving four deep puncture wounds.
In Idaho, there were two incidents of archery hunters using handguns to kill grizzly bears in the Island Park region exactly a year apart, one Sept. 1, 2023, and other this Sept. 1.
During the attack this year, two bowhunters used handguns to shoot an attacking grizzly, which still managed to bite one of the men before it was killed.
And bowhunters killed one grizzly and wounded another in Montana on Sept. 9, according to the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP).
Round Chambered
Kalkowski and his family have hunted elk in the Meeteetse area for many years. In early October, they were on a rifle hunt up the Greybull River drainage.
On the day of the bear attack, Kalkowski said he’d already filled his elk tag. They’d spotted a bull on a ridge, and he and his father decided to pursue it in hopes of filling his father’s tag.
Because he’d already gotten his elk, Kalkowski wasn’t carrying his rifle, but he had his 10 mm Glock in its holster, with a round in the chamber.
Whether to carry a pistol with a round loaded in the firing chamber is matter of some debate among gun owners.
On one hand, there’s always the chance of an accidental firing if the pistol is charged with a chambered round.
But advocates of carrying with one in the chamber argue that in many situations, there’s simply no time to rack a semiautomatic pistol’s slide and load a round into the chamber.
Kalkowski said he recently switched to carrying with a round in the chamber, and he’s glad that he did.
Nowhere To Go
On their initial approach toward the bull elk they were after, “He winded us” (caught their scent) and spooked, going farther up the ridge.
Kalkowski and his father decided to keep going, in case they might get another opportunity to close in on the bull.
They were in a tight spot with dense timber on one side and a steep, rocky drop-off on the other.
Kalkowski decided to stop, turn around and use his cellphone to take a photo of the amazing scenery. He was just turning back around after having done that when a cacophony erupted from the timber.
“It sounded like the forest was falling apart, there were branches breaking,” he said.
His father hoped that it might be the bull elk, but Kalkowski wasn’t sure about that.
“I had a gut feeling that it wasn’t good. I wasn’t sure it was a bear, but I knew it was not good,” he said.
So he went for his pistol, and had only just gotten it clear of the holster when the bear came bursting out of the timber.
‘Empty The Rest Of Your Clip’
He began firing immediately.
“She folded into a soccer-ball shape and rolled right to my feet,” he said.
The bear kept rolling, ending up on a log.
“I thought she was done for, but my dad said, ‘Put the rest of your clip (magazine) into her,’” he said.
So he emptied the rest of the Glock’s 15-round magazine into the bear, which rolled off the log and back into the nearly impossibly-dense timber.
The incident unfolded in a matter of seconds, Kalkowski said.
He took off his backpack, loaded a fresh magazine into his pistol, and then he and his father went to investigate the spot where they’d seen the grizzly roll back into the timber.
They thought they could hear the bear as it drew its last breaths and died, but the cover was so thick, they couldn’t see it.
As is required by law, they reported the shooting to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which investigated the incident, Kalkowski said.
Grizzlies remain under federal protection in the Lower 48, so they may not be hunted. They can, however, be legally killed in self-defense or in defense of another human.
Thick With Bears
Kalkowski said that his family routinely has encounters with grizzlies while hunting near Meeteetse.
Clement, likewise, previously told Cowboy State Daily that he and his family and friends over the years have had previous run-ins with grizzlies in the Upper Green River Basin prior to him being attacked.
Kalkowski said his hunting party had seen numerous grizzly tracks during their hunting trip, leading up to the day he and his father were charged.
“That bear (that he shot) was the first one we encountered during this trip,” he said, but it seems as if there are ever-more bears in the area with each passing hunting season.
“It’s getting ridiculous up there,” he said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
