There are some WTW'ers who share my own fascination with the portion of southwestern Montana known as the Gravelly Range and its signature +30 mile above-timberline drive known as the Gravelly Range Road. Myself, I'd eyed it on the Benchmark for years and been on something of a mission for pics and videos of the area before completing a one-day traverse from south to north one year ago yesterday. It was a Tuesday and the only people encountered were a lone cowboy on horseback at the edge of the Centennial Valley as we ascended towards the Gravelly Range Road and a dozen, dozen and a half elk hunters, mostly scouting for the coming rifle season, but including a few bow hunters since it was already bow season, as it is out there today.
Ten days ago, on Monday the 16th, a pair of elk hunters near Black Butte encountered a grizzly in the early morning and were attacked. They managed to drive it away with bear spray even though it came at them repeatedly. Late that same afternoon, and only about a mile distant, two other hunters were attacked. Those two opened fire with firearms during the attack--the first while the bear was at the neck of his buddy, and the bear was driven away. Of the 4 hunters, three were injured enough to need medical treatment and one was hospitalized for at least several days. A 4 day search turned up no grizzly, so signs went up advising of a wounded grizzly in the area.
On Tuesday of this week, one hunter was attacked by a grizzly at a point about 8 miles south of the area of the first two attacks. The grizzly was driven off by gunfire but not before injuring the hunter.
Both areas are on the western slope of the southern end of the north-south range/plateau of the Gravelly Range and are within the upper portions of the Ruby River drainage, generally between Cottonwood Creek and Coal Creek.
The whole thing makes me feel even more foolish about not having bear spray when we were close by the year before. The day before our Gravelly Range Road traverse, we'd driven to Hidden Lake in the hills between the Gravelly Range and the Madison Range. It was only a half-mile walk down a narrow ravine from the Jeep trail's end to the lake so we just "went for it", sans protection of any sort. As we hiked out a couple of hours later, we encountered some locals hiking in. It was 3 generations of Montanans from the Sheridan area. The grandpa had identified our rental Jeep as being licensed in Bozeman so he was already skeptical of our good sense. He looked us up and down and quickly said "Where's your bear spray?". When we admitted we had none, he just shook his head and said "best of luck to you" and proceeded down towards the lake. We'd noticed the youngest, a teenaged boy, had his canister in his right hand while his flyrod was in his left hand. Dad and Grandpa had their canisters in belt holsters ready for quick deployment.
That was a very dumb move which didn't cost us anything but which won't be repeated. Mr. Griz is expanding his range in southwestern Montana and his presence has been confirmed in the West Pioneers and on the western side of the Big Hole since the summer of 2016, each being areas where the last confirmed sightings had been around 100 years ago. In the Fall of 2016, two elk bow hunters "contributed" the cow elk they were blood tracking to a grizzly which was paralleling them and began to huff and growl as they approached the downed elk.
Be careful out there!
Foy
