A grizzly was shot and killed after it charged two men who were picking mushrooms near Choteau, Montana, late Wednesday.
Choteau is in the part of Montana where grizzlies have increasingly been reclaiming their natural prairie habitat.
According to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP), two landowners were picking mushrooms about a mile north of Choteau on Wednesday night when they were charged by an adult female grizzly bear.
The men shot and killed the bear at close range, according to FWP. The men were not injured.
An FWP report identified the men as “John” and “Justin,” without giving their last names. Messages sent Friday from Cowboy State Daily to FWP officials were not returned.
More Grizzly Trouble In Montana
Grizzly trouble isn’t unfamiliar in Montana, including in areas that were, until recently, not occupied by bears.
In April, two anglers fended off a grizzly with gunfire at Red Rocks Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in southwest Montana.
It wasn’t known if any of the shots hit the bear, and the anglers were unharmed, according to FWP reports.
In fall 2023, there were two run-ins between hunters and grizzlies in the Freezout Lake Wildlife Management Area. It’s between the small towns of Choteau and Fairfield, Montana, about 40 miles west of Great Falls.
After one incident in which a bird hunter fired his shotgun at a grizzly, a Montana wildlife official told Cowboy State Daily that he found a shotgun wad with some grizzly hair in it, but no blood.
Wildlife agents later used drones and a helicopter to search for the bear “about 4miles in each direction,” but found nothing, said Chad White, a bear management specialist with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks. That means the bear probably wasn’t seriously hurt.
In another incident, a grizzly tried to claim the carcass of a whitetail buck that an archery hunter had just killed.
The bear ran away when the hunter and an FWP agent drove up to the scene in the agent’s pickup. That gave them enough time to toss the deer carcass into the truck’s bed and leave.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
