It’s beginning to look like I got out just in time.
Before moving to Malta last year I did most of my hunting in Park County. Each fall since the late 1970s found me roaming the mountains around Yellowstone National Park in search of elk. It’s hardly unusual to see bears in that part of the world, but still, in all the years I hunted there, I only saw two grizzlies.
Apparently things changed this fall. Five hunters have been mauled by bears in places I used to hunt.
Two bowhunters were attacked by grizzlies in Beattie Gulch, another hunter was attacked by a grizzly while black bear hunting in the Little Trail Creek area north of Gardiner in September and a bowhunter was attacked in Tom Miner Basin early last month.
Then a California man was badly mauled Tuesday in the same general area by a bear that took a swipe at him, knocking his eyeball from its socket and severely damaging his face.
Suddenly I don’t miss Park County elk hunting so much.
The last bull I shot was up Beattie Gulch, a drainage bordering the park in sight of Gardiner, not the kind of place you’d expect to be attacked by a grizzly. It’s surrounded by national park and private land and can be hunted in a couple of hours.
Most hunters head up the open hillside before first light and then check the timber halfway up the slope for tracks of any elk that may have wandered out of the park during the night.
Traffic on U.S. 89 can be seen and heard from most anywhere up Beattie Gulch. But Beattie, like Little Trail Creek and Tom Miner Basin, while easily accessible, borders huge tracts of wild land that harbor grizzly bears.
For that reason I may have been a better hunter down there. Knowing it was bear country kept me on my toes and made me pay attention.
Antelope hunting last week on the prairie south of town, I stepped into a covey of sage grouse that exploded around me as they rose. Had I not been daydreaming as I picked my way through the sagebrush I would have seen them.
But while close-flushing birds may scare the pants off me, they won’t maul me or eat me. And now that it’s started to cool off, there aren’t any rattlesnakes to worry about.
A friend from Gardiner who had come up to visit last week asked if I was going to make it down for an elk hunt before the season ends.
“I’d like to,” I told him. “But I think I’ll wait until the bears hibernate.”
I don’t want to press my luck.
Parker Heinlein is at pman@mtintouch.net