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6 Ranch Podcast
6 Ranch Podcast
Grizzly Attack Survivor, Chase Dellwo
This is the most incredible grizzly attack and survival story of the last century, and this is the only place you can hear it.
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So for you know, dang near 20 years, this was a running joke between me and my brother. Hey, when you get mauled by a bear, it was never. If you get mauled by a bear it was. When you get mauled by a bear, shove your arm down his throat.
Speaker 2:These are stories of outdoor adventure and expert advice from folks with calloused hands. I'm James Nash and this is the Six Ranch Podcast. For those of you out there that are truck guys like me. I want to talk to you about one of our newest sponsors, deckt. If you don't know Deckt they make bomb-proof drawer systems to keep your gear organized and safely locked away in the back of your truck. Clothes, rifles, packs, kill kits can all get organized and at the ready so you don't get to your hunting spot and waste time trying to find stuff. We all know that guy. Don't be that guy.
Speaker 2:They also have a line of storage cases that fit perfectly in the drawers. We use them for organizing ammunition, knives, glassing equipment, extra clothing and camping stuff. You can get a two-drawer system for all dimensions of full size truck beds or a single drawer system that fits midsize truck beds and maybe best of all, they're all made in the USA. So get decked and get after it. Check them out at deckedcom. Shipping is always free. Shipping is always free. Hello again, folks. Today we are outside Choteau, montana, with Chase Delwo and Chase, you have an incredible story that I've heard bits and pieces from multiple people about, but why don't you introduce yourself?
Speaker 1:Tell me a little bit about who you are and what you do before we get into it. Hey everybody, my name is Chase. Like I said, we're just or, like James said, we're just north of Choteau on our ranch. My wife and I are currently in the process of building a house and we're set up in the living room and it's very dirty and unput together, so it's going to be a beautiful home.
Speaker 2:It's already beautiful, thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I grew up about 30 miles straight west here along the Rocky Mountain Front. My family had a ranch there has a ranch there, grew up hunting, fishing, chasing elk, chasing deer, chasing cows Basically the best childhood you could ever have, because I had no backyard. It was the Bob Marshall wilderness and beyond, so it was pretty sweet.
Speaker 2:And this, this country here, is really interesting to me. It always has been, because I I like to think about what it would be like for those, those early European explorers who are coming out here, coming across all that plains for hundreds of miles and then seeing the Rocky mountain front, and how intimidating that must've been for them. Because this, this mountain range, is pretty formidable just to look at, even from a distance of, you know, 50 miles or so, however far we are away from it now, and a heck of a lot of wilderness in there and just just a lot of really rugged, rugged, beautiful country. But from there it's pretty flat. If you go east of here, there's not much else.
Speaker 1:Oh, from here to the pancake, or from here to the mountains. There's it's flat as a pancake, except for one hill yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then if you head the other way, it's, it's just barely downhill all the way to the gulf of mexico.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep, it's pretty flat here, that's for sure what kind of cattle did you guys raise?
Speaker 2:or do you raise seven tall angus cross? Okay, a lot of red cattle in this country. I don't like them small brains yeah yeah well, they taste good, they Well, they taste good, they taste good, they taste good. All right, so tell me, tell me your story. How, how did this start?
Speaker 1:So it was a little over nine years ago, um. My brother Shane and I we were up at the ranch. I at the time, my wife Beck and I were living in Bozeman and came up on a Friday night, stayed at my brother's house. We were going to go out early Saturday morning and try and get on some elk and the weather was terrible. It was 20, 30 mile an hour, winds, raining and snowing. We found this group of probably 15, 20 head in a nice bowl in a really, really huntable spot. But we were waiting for my uncle to get there, so we kind of just let them be. To be honest, neither of us wanted to get out of the truck. We both wanted to stay where the, where the heater was.
Speaker 1:So we just went for a drive, drove over to another spot right on muddy creek, and the topography is more the same. It's flat, the creek bottom is a low depression, it's alfalfa fields on both sides, the. The brush there is 10 to 12 feet tall, um 40 yards wide to 100 yards wide at some spots. So we kind of go down there and driving along and we see the three-year-old Anderson elk walking into the brush about 200 yards west of us and it's like sweet. So the plan was I was going to just kind of stalk after him, see if I could get one, and my brother Shane, about a half mile to the West. There they crossed the fence and the fences always tore down there from out crossing. So he was going to go set up there and either I get a shot at one or I bump them right into him.
Speaker 2:Is this rifle hunting or bow hunting?
Speaker 1:Archery hunting. Okay, yep, um, so, anyways, I opened up the door of the pickup. My shotgun is there, my pistol is there, my bear spray is there, my bow is there. The only thing I grab is my bow?
Speaker 2:sure, I mean, they're only 200 yards away right pickups.
Speaker 1:Right there we're hunting some, some brush and some alfalfa meadows, so take on after them. Um, it's snow, but the snow isn't sticking. The ground is warm enough, it's just melting off right away and uh, so just kind of sneaky after them, um, doing a little bit of cow call and trying to get some responses, just to kind of keep a bearing on them. There's a, there's a beaver dam and the pond is dried up. It dried up a long time ago. So where the pond was, it's just grass, and I could see the elk right on the other side of it.
Speaker 2:So you're thinking this is, this is going to happen, Right right and they're.
Speaker 1:They're about 70, 75 yards away and so I kind of dropped below the old beaver dam and because they were going to the north, so I was going to use that beaver dam to kind of swing around to the north and and get in front of them and I got my eye on the elk and I'm walking along this beaver, the bottom side of this beaver dam, and it's pretty thick brush um of course, you're probably trying to be as quiet as you possibly could.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm pretty bad at that, though I get excited at times. But but, um, I had the wind to help me out and, with as wet as it was, you know that everything was pretty it was. It was good hunting conditions. As far as noise, yeah, Um, anyway. So I'm, I'm walking along and I got my eyes trained to my left and out of the corner of my eye there's some movement, basically at my feet, three, four feet away, and I turned my head and I had woken up. A grizzly bear that was taking a nap, and I took a step back and I started to draw my bow and with his left paw he hit me halfway between my hip and my right knee. It knocked me to the ground, came on top of me. I pulled my bow up over my face, but uh, bears are pretty strong and he ripped that thing out of there Like it wasn't, wasn't even there.
Speaker 2:What did that hit feel like when he swatted you?
Speaker 1:Nothing. I felt nothing. Yeah, um, we'll, we'll circle back to that.
Speaker 2:Cause that was kind of interesting yeah.
Speaker 1:Um, so he pulled the bow out of my hands, um, and I, just I was on my back, um, you know, over and over, play dead, play dead, play dead. I just, uh, tucked my chin, held my, held my fists up like a boxer and um tried to protect my throat and he bit into the back of my head, uh, through my nose, through my eye socket, through my, through through my face, um, kind of as a as a dog, you know, shakes a chew toy. That's basically what. What I felt like at that time? Um, again, there, there was no pain at the time, um, there was a lot of screaming.
Speaker 2:So besides pain, though, were any of your other senses firing Like? Were you smelling anything Were?
Speaker 1:you hearing anything? He had a very stinky breath. Um, it's hard to describe just the dark, musky, stinky smell. Um, but no, there was no pain. It all happened so fast and the adrenaline was just going. Could you hear those teeth on your skull? Yeah, it was loud. Yeah, very loud. Um, especially across my left temple, that one was pretty loud, pretty loud.
Speaker 1:Um, the uh, you know, just like a dog kind of growls when he's shaking. That toy bear did the same thing to me and then, uh, he left and, uh, I was a little bit. I never lost consciousness, but I was obviously dazed. Um, I sit up, I start to kind of assess what's going on. I reach for my bow, um, don't know where my hat is, don't know why. That was important at the time, but I was looking for my hat. Um, anyway, he, he must, uh see me again. And he came back a second time. He tore into my right lower leg and same deal, just like a dog with a chew toy, just shaking the heck out of it. Then came back up for my face again and my right arm and just same time, just shaking with every bite and not being very friendly.
Speaker 2:Do you think he was trying to kill you?
Speaker 1:No, I think if he wanted to kill me I wouldn't stand a chance. Yeah, you know he was taking a nap and I walked into his bedroom and he was giving me what I had coming.
Speaker 2:So when you say something like bears are strong, can you get into that a little bit more, because folks don't understand how strong they are?
Speaker 1:So at the time it happened was 26 200 pounds. Um, I'm not a weak person, I'm a pretty strong guy, I work. I worked at the time, I worked out and, uh, there, there was nothing I could do. Yeah, can't even move the needle, yeah, and, and you know, this bear was 350, maybe probably 350 pounds, pretty conservative estimate.
Speaker 2:And which is, which is about what they are here, isn't it maybe? Maybe a little bit on the light side. Yeah, yeah for a younger bear yeah, but there was nothing.
Speaker 1:I mean, it was like trying to move a trailer house yeah there's. I could try as hard as I could. There's no budging that thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean you think about how they make their living right? They're killing elk and moose and stuff with their face.
Speaker 1:Yep, and they're digging up rocks the size of 400 pounds to get stuff underneath of them. Yeah, to eat a couple ants, yep, ants and moths, and they're an incredible animal for sure.
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Speaker 1:I don't, I don't think people spend time thinking about that.
Speaker 2:So now it's it's you versus this and he's come back three times. Now Twice, Come back twice yeah.
Speaker 1:So then, what happened? So kind of a long story. When I was a little kid, my grandmother, she always got me National Geographics, she always got me National Geographic, and there was an article in one of these National Geographic about a gentleman in Africa who was mauled by a lion and he was able to survive by shoving his arm down the lion's throat. So I might have been 8 or 9 when this was read to me. So for you know, dang, near 20 years, this was a. This was a running joke between me and my brother. Hey, when you, when you get mauled by a bear it was never if you get mauled by a bear, it was when you get mauled by a bear shove your arm down his throat. So when the bear was chewing on my arm, um, it seemed like the net, that that was be the logical thing to do. Um, and I was on my back and he had my right arm in his mouth and I just shoved back as hard as I could and he pushed off of me and went the other way almost immediately.
Speaker 2:And then was he gone for good.
Speaker 1:I was. I grabbed my bow, you know, because where I was I was down on the lower side of the beaver dam and it was a pretty thick brush. I grabbed my bow and, you know, it was only 20, 30 yards. I made it to the middle of that meadow, where the, where the dried up pond was, and, uh, knocked an arrow. That was the only thing I had. Um, kind of did a little bit of assessment how, how bad is this? Um, so at that time, from basically the, the bridge of my nose back to the very top of my head and around to my ear, was hanging down to my chin. He basically scalped me.
Speaker 2:So the skin from the top of your head must have been covering your eye a little bit too. Yeah, my left eye.
Speaker 1:So I flopped that back up on my head and I could see out of my left eye, which at the time I wasn't sure if I had an eye left or not. So I was all good there. I had my eye just a bunch of floppy skin hanging from my head. I didn't know how bad it was. Typically don't have cell phone service there. I had my eye, um, just a bunch of floppy skin hanging from my head. I didn't know how bad it was. Typically don't have cell phone service. They're pulled out. My phone called my brother. Um, the blood was like pouring out of my head. I don't, I don't pouring out of my head. Um covered the screen of my phone. I didn't know if the call went through or not. Um out of my head. Um covered the screen of my phone. I didn't know if the call went through or not. Um throw the phone back in my pocket.
Speaker 1:So right now my brother is a half mile. At least the plan was. He was going to be about a half mile West of me. Um, my uncle's house wasn't too far away and I didn't know if I should waste time trying to find my brother who is hunting down in this creek bottom, or if I just hightail it to my uncle's house. So I just chose to go to my uncle's house. There's a landline there, I know I can call there. So I start walking out. Start walking out and that bull that I was hunting he, he comes. He comes walking out of the trees and he's about 35 yards away and he's just looking at me like man. Buddy, I feel bad for you.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I remember being so mad like I don't know why I never turned off the hunting. Yeah, Like I wanted to off the hunting. Yeah, Like I wanted to kill that elk. Sure, Still After, and I just remember I couldn't and I just yelled at him Stupid, Just a dumb thing. But I remember I just yelled at that elk Like I was mad that I couldn't shoot him.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And anyway, so I started hiking.
Speaker 2:How's your leg?
Speaker 1:doing. Yeah, uh, it still hadn't quite set in, sure, still wasn't pain. Um, I walked out of the creek bottom and, uh, I see my pickup and it wasn't anywhere near where it was supposed to be. And I see my pickup and it wasn't anywhere near where it was supposed to be. So I flagged my brother down and he is no help whatsoever. He just stayed in the pickup and he's glassing the other direction and so my leg is starting to stiffen up, both from where I got my lower leg where I got chewed on my upper leg where I got hit by a, by a. I beam felt like um. So I go to the pickup and he's just sitting in there and I remember seeing my reflection in the in the glass of the window like whole, you are messed up, buddy. That had to have been shocking a little bit. Yep, um.
Speaker 1:So I open up the door of the pickup. My brother, shane, still hasn't gotten out. He's just kind of looking at me like what the heck, and I'm like I got mauled by a bear and he freaked out for two seconds and he hops out of the pickup driver's seat, comes over, he grabs my bow and throws it in the back. I yelled at him for that, because that's not how you treat a bow. Right, set it down nicely. And he started taking off my clothes. You could tell the face and my head, that was obvious stuff, but he wanted to make sure I wasn't bleeding out anywhere else, or very smart um. So he loaded me back up in the pickup and it's a as uh, my friend colton would say, it's not quite a road back to the county road and he made very good time on that, not so much of a road that hurt like hell and uh getting bounced around while you're already jacked up.
Speaker 2:It's not a fun experience and, uh, you getting scared yet at this point.
Speaker 1:I don't know if scared is the. I don't know if scared is the right word. It was hard to describe Like. I don't know if scared is the right word. It was hard to describe Like like I knew it was bad. Shane knew it was bad, but he, his cool, his, his demeanor changed the entire thing. He he called the sheriff's department. Said hey, my name is Shane Delvo. Called the sheriff's department, said hey, my name is shane delwell. I'm driving a white f-150, I'm going to be speeding, don't pull me over. Hung up the phone, called the hospital in choteau. This is shane delwell.
Speaker 1:My brother, chase got mauled by a bear. He's gonna need this, this and this. Have the emergency room ready for him. He called my. My wife was very calm, said hey, Becca, Chase got mauled by a bear. You have to pack clothes for three days. You have to get in your car, make sure it's full of gas and drive to Great Falls and we'll meet you there. He was just like, like, we're having this conversation. That was the same tone of his voice, you know, just very calm. So that that was a huge thing.
Speaker 2:He was very calming, Um nice to have a guy like that around during an emergency.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep, yep, um. So, yeah, we drove into town and, uh, went to the emergency room in Choteau and they were great. How long is that drive? Well, it depends on if your brother just got mauled by a bear. It's about 25 minutes, but normally it's about an hour. Yeah, we made it to town pretty dang quick. Got in there, they did x-rays of my leg. Leg wasn't broken, skull was fractured in two spots. So they thought, and basically, with Shoto it was just a PA on call on a Saturday and not a lot they could do there. So we jumped in an ambulance and drove to Great Falls and then I sat there for hours and hours and hours just bleeding, waiting to get into surgery.
Speaker 2:Really Just like in a waiting room or something.
Speaker 1:No, I was in the emergency room. But with being scalped, you can't just put pressure on it and stop the bleeding. Right Tourniquet around the throat Wouldn't do much good yeah. I mean that brings it to a conclusion. So yeah, just the just kept pumping the, pumping the fluids to me and, um, trying to keep me halfway cleaned up and so were they throwing blood into you at that point?
Speaker 2:Nope, no blood. Okay, nope, all right. So you're there for hours waiting to get into surgery at great falls. Um, did you, did you feel like you were in good hands there? Oh, yeah, yeah. Had they seen bear attacks before?
Speaker 1:No, no, the only one that had. Um, there was a. There was a gentleman who was a traveling nurse and he was from Alaska and he was in Choteau and, um, when I was in the emergency room in Choteau there's a lot, a little bit of indecision, and my family was there and they weren't handling the situation very well. I'm like all right, guys, has anybody ever dealt with this before? And this gentleman raises his hand and said, yeah, I have From Alaska. I've seen a couple bear attacks. I'm like all right, what do we do? So he kind of he didn't take charge, but he kind of gave some welcome advice and we went from there and this is you who's coordinating that and having that conversation.
Speaker 1:A little bit, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. Okay, so what was surgery like?
Speaker 1:Uh, no idea. Um, I got into an argument with a nurse kind of over some stupid things. Um, I wanted to get up and move myself to the operating table and they said no. And I said I walked in here, I in here, I can do this.
Speaker 2:Sure that wasn't the uh appropriate response it's hard to know when to quit being a cowboy, isn't it?
Speaker 1:yes, yeah, um. Anyway, before surgery had an mri. Um, my skull wasn't fractured, it was basically just cuts in my bone from the canine of the bear. That's good news, so that was good. So went into surgery Saturday. So it's not a full staff, of course. So I had an ear, nose and throat doctor who did the putting together of Humpty Dumpty after he fell off the wall on my face and he did a. I think he did a pretty bang up job.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you look great, thank you. I mean, I can see some scars and stuff, but it doesn't look like you got, you know, spent time with your face inside of a bear's mouth. Yeah, yeah, uh. What was the recovery like? Um?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what was the recovery like? So the wound in my lower leg, that was just a couple of puncture wounds from the canines. My upper leg, that bear hit me so hard that the claws didn't cut my skin, but he hit me so hard that the skin broke and I was black from my hip down to my ankle. From that I mean just to show you how strong they are, I mean just from him hitting me.
Speaker 2:I've seen pictures of yearling cattle in Wyoming. They have had their necks broken and their head turned 180 degrees around from a barehead. Yeah, like this isn't like a cat swatting at a ball of yarn. This is a different thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah um, so I had that. I had a tube in my head, 47 stitches, 400 to 5 or 47 staples, 400 to 500 stitches in my face and head. So I think I was in the hospital until the. I think I got discharged on the 7th of October and this happened on the 3rd, and then Becca drove me back to Bozeman, had a couple follow-up appointments, more emergency room visits for pain and some other things potential blood clots in my leg had an appointment back in Great Falls with the ENT and the guy that worked on my lower leg on the 15th of October and the ENT was very happy. He removed a bunch of staples, took out the drain and when I went to see the I'm trying to think of his name, jeremy's his first name, anyway, when I went to see him for my lower leg, he took off the dressing and basically looked at it and smelled it and cleared his schedule for the next day and I had to go into surgery and had it's called a wound debridement where basically they just go in there and cut out anything and everything that might be infected.
Speaker 1:Right, the canines had punctured. There's a sack around your bones. Um, it had punched, punctured that sack and so the infection was spreading along my bone. Um, had a really nice easy path to spread there. Um, so back up a little bit for recovery and all the stuff that's going on.
Speaker 1:So the holes in my leg they were too big to sew closed and with wounds like that you have to get them to heal from the inside out. So when you do that they showed my wife how to do it once and then she had to do it for the next 10 days she took a about a 20 inch piece of ribbon gauze and would pack it into my leg twice a day and pull it out and it hurt. Hurt like hell pulling it out, but that also stimulated the tissue to help help re regrowth. Um, so that was a painful experience twice a day every day. Um, so then, sorry after the so that was a painful experience twice a day every day.
Speaker 1:So then, sorry after the follow-up visit to Dr Jeremy in Great Falls, I had to go in to have surgery the next day and they just went to cut and cut out any material that looked questionable the remedy for that. So they took a small hole. They took a couple of small holes and made it a big hole. Um, it was called a wound vac, and what they do there is they take a sponge and they pack it into the wound, and then they, they hook up a vacuum over it and they um for lack of a better word just cover everything with a piece of plastic so it has a good seal. And then, this wound vac, it creates a negative pressure so it increases blood flow to the area. Yep and I had that on for 18 days and it was incredible to watch that just gaping hole in my leg close up.
Speaker 2:Sounds painful, though.
Speaker 1:Oh, it was miserable, because twice a week I had to go in and they had to rip that sponge out, and so your tissue is going around, all the pieces of the sponge and and they ripped it out they. It couldn't have been fun for them either, cause it was. It was bad, but also the that was at the wound clinic down in Bozeman and it was for people that had abdominal surgeries. You know, there's one guy in there. I remember seeing him. He had it's like a small dinner plate on a on his side, on his on his stomach. I'm like, oh well, I don't have it that bad. That guy's got a, he's got a crap time ahead of him. What?
Speaker 2:were you doing for work at the time? I was an electrician, so so I mean, how does something like this set you back, Like, how do you manage that stuff? Did you have insurance that was helping you out?
Speaker 1:Yep, I did have insurance. Um, pretty good insurance. The company I worked with. They were. They were pretty awesome All the time I took off. They just paid me for it, like I was working for them. That's nice. Um, yeah, it wasn't. I didn't take very much time off work. Um, we had just bought a house and emptied our savings. I think it only took like maybe 60 hours off work. Um, we were doing this, this uh building for Barnard construction. It was their new office headquarters and there were were 100 plus office spaces, so I just had a little chair with wheels Go around put in outlets.
Speaker 1:You know just as light duty as you can do.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, but you're getting back in it just as quick as you can. Now there's the physical recovery side of it, and then there's the the mental health recovery side of it. That can take a hell of a lot longer oh, it was terrible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah what was that like, um. Just what is that?
Speaker 2:like constant nightmares, yeah, um it, it was it the same nightmare.
Speaker 1:No, never. Well, some sometimes. But you know the the human mind is a pretty impressive thing and it's pretty crazy the terrible things we can dream up. Um, I went for about five, almost six months without sleeping more than an hour, two at a time.
Speaker 2:Cause you get a little bit scared to sleep, because that night you know that nightmare is coming yeah, yeah, yeah, my, my friend brock, he uh, he bought me the movie jurassic world and I thought oh yeah, I'll watch this well watching a show about people getting eaten by animals after you just almost got eaten by an animal was a terrible idea.
Speaker 1:Um, I remember I watched mulan and tangledled and a whole bunch of Disney movies for like two days straight, just trying to find something happy.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep, yep.
Speaker 1:Ended up going to. I can only remember his first name, chris. He was a. He was a. He specialized in PTSD treatment for veterans. Uh, went to him for a long time, huge help, huge help. Uh kind of a kind of a pride ego deal.
Speaker 2:Not going to him sooner wish I would have, because it was immensely helpful yeah, you know, I talked to a guy in alaska who'd who'd gotten gotten mauled by a brown bear and it had blinded him, and he talked about the PTSD from that and I was up there with a group of combat wounded veterans and he said, well, it's nothing like the PTSD that some of you guys might have. And I said, no, it's exactly like that. It's really truly exactly like that. It's really truly exactly like that. It doesn't really matter what causes it, the response to it, while it varies from person to person, it's the same thing. And if you've had a traumatic experience that is causing you post-traumatic stress, you need to go get that worked on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was a hard deal to say. Yeah, I need to go get that worked on, yeah it was.
Speaker 2:It was a hard deal to say, yeah, I need to go get that worked on. It is hard, it's super hard. Uh, when I first got her in Afghanistan, I went to um. You know I, I just went to like a brain doctor, right, and uh, he's like, oh, you're going to feel better in a couple of days. Well, a couple of days go by and I'm not feeling better, I'm actually feeling worse. This continues to go on. And somebody said, well, you might need to go um, talk to a psychologist, like, well, that's not going to happen.
Speaker 2:Yep no feeling and uh, and eventually that became like my, my only option. I was like I'll try anything. So I went and talked to this guy. No-transcript, but man, it's a lot of work, isn't it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's hard to admit it, yeah.
Speaker 2:Especially kind of coming from the cultures that you and I do, right, yeah, it's hard to admit it, yeah, uh, especially kind of coming from the cultures that you and I do, right, yeah, it's really tough. So how, how did, uh, how did this experience, you know, affect the way you spend your time outdoors? Do you still haunt? Yes, yeah, do you still hunt in bear country? Same spot.
Speaker 1:Same spot that same year. So that happened on October 3rd, I think it was the day after Thanksgiving. My uncle took Becca, my wife, out and me elk hunting and rifle season now, of course. And as we're driving to our spot, uh, bear crosses the road and literally feet from the pickup and yeah, let's keep going. Yeah, um, ran into numerous bears since then and I, um, when you were driving in here, you turned off the highway and right when you turn south, starting in early may, we start irrigating and becca comes out here in the mornings and she has about a two and a half mile loop that she runs with our dogs and she typically just parks the highway and runs in and checks all the irrigation pumps and the pivots. There were two I think there were two-year-old cubs that just got kicked off their mom right there by that turn where you turned to come back south.
Speaker 2:Out here in the prairie.
Speaker 1:Over your shoulder, about two and a half miles down the ray. Uh, my buddy ben, he had a bear charge him on his porch and he shot it. Lucky, lucky circumstances there. He just got back from a hunting trip and had his rifle leaned up against the door as he was unloading some other stuff and on his front porch. Yeah, so I mean, getting away from bears isn't an option.
Speaker 1:I still hunt, um, I'm. My wife still hunts. We're going to do it. We're going to teach our kids to do it. We were. We weren't hunting this year. Um, had a lot of stuff going on, just haven't got the bows out but still wanted to show the kids what it's like. So we loaded up one morning, drove out in the dark, went and uh, hiked up into, hiked up into some elk country and looked around for some elk, saw some cows, heard the bull bugling. Never got a glimpse of him, but took the kids they're four, my daughter Sloane, she's four and Riker's six and took them out there and showed them that and, with me and God's help, hopefully they enjoy it and get a passion for it, cause it is awesome.
Speaker 2:Folks are going to want to know what happened to the bear.
Speaker 1:As I know, he's still running around.
Speaker 2:Do you have any thoughts or feelings towards that individual animal?
Speaker 1:No, I, I woke him up. If, if he walked into my bedroom, I probably would have tried to whoop up on him too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what are your feelings about or what advice would you give to, say, folks of of washington state, where they're looking at reintroducing or introducing bears to an area where they've not not been there, you know, for 100 plus years? They're trying to bring grizzlies in there, don't yeah? Because being out here on the edge of the front like bears are part of everyone's life and have been for a long time.
Speaker 1:Kind of Okay. So where I grew up so, highway 89 kind of follows the Rocky Mountain Front from the Canadian border south. So from there west the population density is very small of people. So the ranch that I grew up on, our nearest neighbor was six or eight miles away, um the 20 miles from the ranch to the highway there. That was it. Um to the North, to the South, very, it was a long way. I mean we had the one neighbor and then from that it was about another 40 minute drive to the next neighbor.
Speaker 1:So, and when I was a kid we had, we had bear encounters all the time. I went out I was probably my son's age, maybe a little bit older. I go out, walk out the door of the house to go put the sheep in for the night and there's a bear eating out of the dog food dish. You know, six feet away from me there's been a grizzly bear in our house. They're there a lot. They have been a lot In the last 10 years. The population is increasing incredibly, so they're getting pushed farther and farther down. So they're getting pushed farther and farther down. So like these bears that my wife ran into this past, may you know, you can look around and count 20 houses from where she saw those bears at Right, and I don't know the population density or the area that they want to reintroduce bears into Washington.
Speaker 1:But here it works, because where our ranch is it butts up immediately. To the west of it there's the Blackleaf Game Range and then there's the I don't know how many tens of thousands of acres of Forest Service and then the Bob Marshall scapegoat, glacier National Park, millions of acres. So that's where they belong. They're going to come down, which is just fine. But when you actually establish populations of bears down here on the prairie, there's going to be issues. So from where we're sitting, you can count house, house, house. You know, you know, everybody has a couple hundred acres here, but there's a pile of houses, a pile of families, um, you know. So there's a. There's a big difference from where we are to where my family's ranch is, just as far as people right. Um, there's, they have always, have always had and will continue to have livestock conflicts. My family, they deal with it very well. I have a good relationship with the fish, wildlife and parks and DNRC guys.
Speaker 2:And because grizzlies are listed when you have that conflict, you also need to involve US Fish and Wildlife Yep. So you've got multiple agencies kind of mucking things up.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not an easy situation right now. I would sure like to see grizzlies get delisted. I'm sure you would as well.
Speaker 1:In the right way.
Speaker 2:What would be the right way. Slowly yeah, so delist by area, or what would slowly look like.
Speaker 1:Well, number one don't auction off a tag. So you have a multimillionaire come out here and do things the wrong way. Have a raffle and one tag the first year, yeah, and go up from there because it's going to take baby steps. It needs to happen, it should happen, um, but doing it the right way, I think, is incredibly important.
Speaker 2:what I hear from the biologists in montana is that the population is ready to be delisted, even completely, aside from whether they're hunted or how they're hunted, but just they no longer need the protection of the Endangered Species Act.
Speaker 1:No, they don't. You're correct and focus on where you're going to hunt these bears. Don't just say. Correct me if I'm wrong. The term in the news is the northern continental divide ecosystem for these bears. Right and then the yellowstone.
Speaker 2:Greater yellowstone, greater yellowstone, yeah.
Speaker 1:So when you have the yellowstone label, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:People are thinking you're shooting bears in the park.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You're not. And when they, when they issue, when they do issue a tag, it should be a hundred miles from the park. So there's no question. So you don't shoot Charlie Brown bear off?
Speaker 2:Yeah, somebody with a name and a number?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah a ways away, like here for instance. So out front door here is highway 220. You have the teton river that goes down there. Um, I have a, a friend who last year he had 16 of 17 grain bin doors get ripped off. Wow, and bears are strong, they can. They can rip off a grain bin door. I can't, um, but they're opportunistic. They're smart. Is a grain's a good feed for them? Hunt those bears right, the ones up there in the mountains that are that are having to find a wounded moose or elk, and chase that thing down. Leave those guys be, they got a rough life. The ones down here in a cornfield or a grain field, hunt that one and put a little bit of pressure on the ones that are in a populated area.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because, like you mentioned, what you don't want are bears who are born out here around people, and this is all they ever know. Because you can't relocate that bear someplace else, he'll, he'll just come back and there's always going to be conflict. So it's not. It's not a fair thing to the bear, it's not a fair thing to the people, it's not a fair thing to the pets and to the livestock. It's a bad situation.
Speaker 1:Potentially.
Speaker 2:Yes, we recorded a show this winter about the bears in Tahoe. In the city of Tahoe they have this huge bear population that have become completely dependent upon people. They're denning underneath people's houses. They're living off garbage and dog food, living off garbage and dog food. And when they've taken these bears out into the wild, they're either coming back or they're starving to death because they don't know how to live without people. Right, and I said you know, eventually this is going to end up in conflict and at the time, nobody had been killed by a bear in California.
Speaker 2:Well, a couple months later it happened. A bear came into this woman's house and killed her. They're having to put up electric doormats so that when bears approach doors because they know how to open doors that they're getting shocked by these doormats. It's pretty wild, it's pretty crazy. That's with black bears, right, which is a lot closer to a black bears, right, um, which is a lot closer to uh, you know, 300 pound raccoon than what we're talking about. If you start developing that type of situation with grizzlies, um, it's just entirely different and I hope that people understand the difference between grizzly bears and black bears. So there's a lot of differences that are pretty meaningful. Oh, absolutely, yes, yeah, yeah, I'm, uh, I'm, I'm sure, grateful you made it through all that and I am too, thank you, and that you had your had your brother and and your family and and all those doctors and people that that helped you out and helped you through all that.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you're still hunting oh, I wouldn't give that up for anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Just had a pretty, pretty good hunting trip a couple weeks ago I'm not sure if colton told you about that my wife shot her first bull elk. I saw a picture of it tell her I said congratulations I will, though that was pretty sweet, had the kids along and everything, and yeah it was a. It was a heck of a hunt that's sweet.
Speaker 2:Uh, I think people fantasize a little bit about bear attacks and they they don't understand quite how it's going to go down. What advice would you give to people who are going to spend time in grizzly country?
Speaker 1:Um, the biggest mistake I, the way that that we used to hunt, um, you know you would, you would spot a bull, and where we hunt is, uh, it's weird terrain. Um, not so much mountains, picture, like, honestly, it's more like Alaska, with the low, low, low brush down in the coolies and stuff. So you're on your hands and knees crawling through stuff. Um, you know, you're always going against the wind being quiet, making elk sounds, not not a great combination of things. Since then changed how we hunt. There are some spots you just don't go um, but yeah, that that's the biggest thing is don't go alone. I, I am pretty confident, you know, having another person there, would it? You know that bear might have roughed me up for two or three seconds. Then, with another person there, would have left um, but that was a big thing and you know he may have heard us, two people making noise instead of one person. Um, but it, it wouldn't have mattered if I had my bear sprayer, shotgun or pistol. There was no time to use anything. Yeah, um, it just happened too quick, yeah, but yeah, so from now on, kind of how my wife, wife and I hunt is she always has the bear spray ready.
Speaker 1:I carry a pistol most of the time because I have a shotgun. Whenever we're moving from spot to spot, she carries both bows and I have either my pistol or shotgun in hand ready to use it. What pistol do you carry? I carry a Kimber 1911, 10 millimeter. She got she got it for my wedding present, nice. What ammo do you like? Oh man, hsm makes it. It's a bare load. I think it's a 230 grain. It's on point.
Speaker 2:Gotcha. Uh, I've, I've got some better stuff that I'm going to send you. Perfect, yeah, yeah, You'll like it, I'm all about that. Yeah, okay, we'll get the folks at G9 to send you some woodsman ammo. Works really well on bears and things like that.
Speaker 2:I used it on a black bear that was charging me and killed him real quick. Oh, wow, which was cool. What was the situation around that? He was eating a dead elk and I saw ravens over it and was trying to figure out what was going on. I came in downwind and there was a bunch of scratch marks going up a tree that was right next to it. It was a little bear and I think that a bigger bear had been coming in and shoving him off of it and he'd had enough. Um, so when I came in, he just charged me and I shot him and killed him.
Speaker 2:But, um, it's, it's funny what goes through your mind on that deal. One of the first things that went through my mind was I'm going to get jacked up by this little tiny bear and my friends are going to make fun of me because it was like 130 pounds, you know was. It's like a black lab-sized bear. But, uh, yeah, it's just it, it's. It is funny kind of looking back on what goes through your mind but, yeah, we'll get you some, we'll get you some, some better ammo, and, uh, I hope I never need it, hope you don't ever need it either, but there's more stuff out there that needs to get shot with a pistol from time to time than just an old grizzly bear. Yes, sir, yeah, alrighty sir, thank you so much. I look forward to uh seeing a finished product of uh, of your beautiful home here and uh, I think that you're going to have a great life in this spot with this incredible view and your family pretty special.
Speaker 1:Well, and thanks for making the trip up and it was nice meeting you, my pleasure bye everybody.
Speaker 2:I just want to take a second and thank everyone who's written a review, who has sent mail, who sent emails, who sent messages. Your support is incredible and I also love running into you at trade shows and events and just out on the hillside when we're hunting. I think that that's fantastic. I hope you guys keep adventuring as hard and as often as you can. Art for the six ranch podcast was created by john chadlin and was digitized by cilia harlander. Original music was written and performed by justin hay, and the Six Ranch podcast is now produced by Six Ranch Media. Thank you all so much for your continued support of the show and I look forward to next week when we can bring you a brand new episode.