Fish and game commissioner shoots grizzly

By CHRIS PETERSON / For the Pilot

Vic Workman might just be living a charmed life. The Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks commissioner from Whitefish narrowly avoided an attack by a grizzly on Sunday while elk hunting with a friend.

Workman and his friend were hunting in Lupfer Meadows in the Lazy Creek drainage north of Whitefish. The two had just begun to head their separate ways when the bear charged Workman from about 30 feet away.

"He was coming at me full bore," Workman said.

Workman yelled at the bear, "Whoa bear! Whoa bear! Whoa."

He didn't want to shoot, he said, but when the bear was about 10 feet away, he fired a single round from the hip with his .300 caliber short magnum rifle. The bear kept running, passing him from about five feet away.

The two men didn't see the bear again.

"It happened pretty quick," Workman said.

Workman said he knows that FWP recommends that hunters carry bear spray when in the woods, but he says in this instance he could have never gotten his out and sprayed it in time. The attack was just too quick.

"I'd be dead or in intensive care right now," he said.

On Monday, Workman accompanied FWP warden captain Lee Anderson, warden Chris Crane and grizzly bear management specialist Tim Manley back to the site of the incident. Manley brought along a bear dog to aid in the search for the bear.

According to Anderson, no dead bear was found, and no definite evidence was present that indicated the grizzly had been hit by the shot.

DNA samples were collected from bear scat at the original location and the location across the creek.

This analysis should determine if the scat was from the same bear or if another bear had visited the site after the incident.

Blood samples along the drag trail were also collected; these samples will be analyzed to determine if they originated from the deer or the grizzly.

It's believed the bear was on a big white-tailed deer carcass when Workman got too close. Bears are very territorial around kills.

By Monday, the carcass had been dragged away and was eaten. Workman suspects that was the work of the bear he shot at or another bear.

Workman says there are too many grizzly bears, and FWP commissioners should put pressure on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to have grizzlies in Northwest Montana delisted from the Endangered Species Act.

Workman said he likes bears, but they need to be managed. If bears were hunted, he said, they would have a greater fear of humans.

"It's a human safety issue," he said.

But delisting the grizzly here is years off, said Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

While the objective is to de-list the bears, population trend studies, habitat standards and mapping have to be completed, and it all has to be coordinated with several government agencies, like the National Park Service and the Forest Service.

That process is as long as 10 years out. Servheen blamed funding for part of the problem. Grizzlies were recently de-listed in the Yellowstone National Park ecosystem, but funding was available to complete the necessary analysis for that area under the law.

Workman and his wife, Puck, are no strangers to the outdoors. They ride 400 to 500 miles in the woods each summer. Vic is an avid hunter. He shot the grizzly that now hangs in Glacier Park International Airport. That bear was shot in Alaska and weighed about 1,200 pounds. He estimated the bear he shot at Sunday weighed about 800 pounds.

This isn't the first time Workman had a brush with death. In February 2006, he was in a helicopter doing winter elk surveys when it ran into foul weather and had to make an emergency landing near Spotted Bear.

Workman, FWP biologist Eric Wenum and pilot Randy Sindelir slogged through deep snow during a snowstorm to reach the safety of the Spotted Bear Lodge. Fortunately, they had a satellite phone to contact help.