A Casper couple said they’re saddened because a young black bear that broke into their second home near Driggs, Idaho, was killed under a zero-tolerance policy for bears that enter occupied structures.
“He wasn’t mean or aggressive,” Page Mamot told Cowboy State Daily, recalling the Aug. 31 encounter with the bear, thought to be about 2 years old.
Her husband, Keith, said the bear showed no fear when he shouted at it, stomped his feet, and at one point started hurling shoes at it.
Even so, he said he lamented the bear being shot by sheriff’s deputies and Idaho Fish and Game agents.
“Once they get to that point of coming into people’s houses," official policy is that there are no second chances for the bear, he said.
He noted the deputies and wildlife agents clearly didn’t relish killing the young bear.
“They kept telling us, ‘We don’t want to do this. We really don’t want to do this,’” Keith said.
The Mamots first encountered the bear in their kitchen at about 4:30 p.m., and the incident was over by about 6 p.m., he said.
Messages left for Idaho Fish and Game weren’t answered by publication time.
Surprise Visitor
The couple returned home from riding in their side-by-side UTV. Keith went to put some more fuel in the vehicle, while Page headed for the house.
She noticed that the retractable screen door to the kitchen area was hanging loose and assumed her husband had entered.
Instead, “there was a black bear sitting on the counter,” she said.
“She immediately came out of the house and yelled ‘bear!’ at me,” Keith said.
“I pulled the bear spray out of the Razor (UTV), thinking there was a bear coming up behind me, and I asked, ‘Where?’” he said.
“And she said, ‘In the house,’” Keith added.
Throwing Shoes and Yelling
Keith said he entered and saw “just the bear’s butt” at first, because apparently it had its face stuck in a butter dish.
He started yelling and “threw some shoes at him,” striking the bear with at least one.
“He eventually got annoyed with me and went outside,” Keith said.
“He turned around and came back in the house. So I went around and came back in through the front door and stomped by feet and screamed at him,” he said. “He meandered back out the first door he came in.”
‘Sheriffs and Four Gunshots’
The bear was still hanging out in their backyard when deputies and game wardens arrived.
The wardens made the call that the bear had to go, and the deputies retrieved rifles from their patrol vehicles.
After the bear was killed, the Mamots asked if they could at least keep the hide.
“They asked us if we had a bear tag. When I said no, they said we couldn’t keep it,” Keith said.
He noted that throughout the commotion, none of their neighbors in the rural subdivision seemed to notice or try calling him or his wife.
“With sheriff’s vehicles out front and four gunshots, nobody called us to ask what was going on,” he said.
High Bear Activity
As is the case across the region, the Driggs area has seen a surge in human-bear conflicts. Drought has left a scarcity of natural food sources, such as berries, so bears have increasingly been coming into settled areas seeking food.
Keith said the game wardens told him that another young black bear, possibly the sibling of the one at their house, had entered a home in their area and been shot.
Durango, Colorado, has also been a hotbed of bear activity.
As of Tuesday, Bear Smart Durango had gotten 268 reports of bear incidents from around town and throughout La Plata County, director Byran Peterson told Cowboy State Daily.
Of those incidents, 172 involved bears getting into trash, he said.
Across the state, Colorado Parks and Wildlife has killed nearly 300 black bears so far this year because of human-bear conflicts, roughly quadruple the number killed last year.
Wildlife managers have killed at least seven black bears in the Teton Valley area of Idaho.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
