Idaho Hunter Kills Grizz with Rifle in Apparent Self-Defense Incident

Dylyn Carter, 27, told MeatEater that he didn't doubt the bear's intentions when it appeared in front of him just a few yards away.

“I feel like she was coming directly for me. I felt like she was on a mission to come get me," he said.

The encounter took place around 3:00pm on Saturday, October 26, north of Kilgore near Mule Meadows on the Caribou-Targhee National Forest. Carter was looking for cow elk in a heavily timbered area with significant deadfall, but he didn't see any ungulates and was about to head back to his truck.

“All of a sudden a grizzly popped up. I didn’t see her until we were five yards apart. We immediately locked eyes, and she instantly came my way. As she charged at me, I didn’t really think about what was going on, it happened too fast. I just pulled up my rifle and shot," he said.

Only about three feet remained between Carter and the bear when he raise his rifle chambered in 7mm-08 Remington. While Carter says he doesn't remember where he struck the bear, an Idaho Fish and Game report obtained by MeatEater says he hit the animal just below its right eye.

In this photo of the bear's skull, a biologist points out the path of the first bullet.

Carter saw the bear fall and roll around on the ground, but then he realized he had another problem. If he turned and ran in the opposite direction, he would have had to climb down a canyon and take a circuitous route back to his truck. He needed to walk directly past the bear to reach help more quickly, but he said it looked like the bear was still very much alive.

"We’re really close quarters. I had to walk within five yards of the bear, and it looked to me like she was trying to get back up. So I put another shot through the bear, I just turned as I was leaving and shot," he said.

IDFG reports that the second shot entered behind the bear's right shoulder.

Carter didn’t stick around to find out if the shots had done their work, but the 1.5-mile walk back to his truck was understandably tense.

“The whole way down my adrenaline was through the roof," he said. “When I was on my way down it seemed like every tree blowing in the wind, or any animal making any noise made me pretty skittish.”

When Carter reached his truck, he first called his wife to tell her what had happened and then he called local law enforcement.

Carter told officials that he did not smell any carcasses or see any other bears in the area. He also mentioned that while he was carrying bear spray, he did not have time to deploy it before the bear reached him.

The next day a team of biologists and law enforcement officers with the U.S. Forest Service and IDFG walked up to the scene. IDFG SCO Chris Johnson noted, “The area surrounding the incident location was heavily timbered with significant deadfall. Visibility, notably at ground level, was poor.”

Officials inspect the scene of the bear kill.

IDFG District Conservation Officer Andrew Sorensen made a similar observation and added that he did not see any animal carcasses, gut piles, or other bear attractants in the area. However, they did find several possible bear daybeds close by, which appeared to confirm the hunter’s account.

“The hunter’s encounter with the grizzly bear occurred at a very close distance in very thick timber/deadfall timber cover, leading investigators to believe it to be a surprise encounter,” Sorensen wrote in his report. IDFG investigators removed the bear’s head and claws for further examination.

Carter says that an agent with the IDFG called him following the incident to ask a followup question, but he hasn't heard from any other official, state or federal. He only learned the case had been deemed self-defense when he read it on the news.

Grizzly bears remain a federally protected species throughout the United States. Any time a grizz is killed, federal and state officials conduct a thorough investigation to ensure the killing was justified.

Hunters kill grizzly bears every year in the course of defending themselves, and a 2015 report listed the average number of bears killed by hunter gunfire at 10.2. This year, hunters have killed several Ursus arctos horribilis, including one incident in western Montana in which the hunter shot and killed a bear with a handgun.

This latest incident is the third since June in which a bear has been killed in this area of Idaho in what officials later determined was self-defense. Bear removals due to livestock depredation remain the leading cause of human-related grizzly mortality, according to a database that tracks grizzly deaths.

Carter says that he's been hunting in this area his entire life, but this is his first run-in with a grizz. He believes, based on his observations, that there are definitely more bears in the area than when he started hunting a decade ago.

Editor's Note: The article has been updated with comments from Dylyn Carter.

Images via IDFG.