Former game warden recalls decades-old griz attack

Louis Kis had a long and distinguished career as a game warden for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. He also probably has one of the best grizzly bear attack survival stories as well.

Thirty years ago, June 1987, Kis was releasing a 500-pound boar grizzly bear up Bunker Creek that had been trapped on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation for killing a cow.

Along for the journey were a couple of other FWP employees and photographer Richard P. Smith. Smith wanted to photograph a grizzly being released and Kis agreed to it.

“You have to be here by 6 a.m.” Kis recalled telling Smith. “I don’t wait for anyone.”

Smith was there at 5:30 a.m. The bear was in a barrel trap in the back of a pickup truck and none too happy about it.

They drove the truck up the South Fork to Bunker Creek. Smith set up his camera a distance away and decided he’d press the shutter down no matter what happened.

Kis got on top of the trap and started to lift up the gate. The gate was sticking and he had a tough time of it.

Kis told the truck driver, “When you hear the clang of the gate, that means it’s closed. Start driving away.”

The gate clanged. But the truck driver didn’t start driving away, Kis, who is now 91 and lives in the Montana Veterans Home, recalled recently.

The grizzly, which was now hopping mad, jumped out of the trap and reached up after Kis, who was still on top of the barrel. As the bear went after Kis, biting and clawing, the barrel trap, which was a lighter aluminum trap designed to be hauled by a helicopter, slid off the bed of the truck. Kis not only fell, he fell on top of the griz, which was even madder now.

The grizzly bit Kis in the leg, and broke his tibia. Kis, meanwhile, pulled out a .357 magnum revolver and shot the bear several times. The last one, under the bear’s chin, killed it.

“When he was chewing on my leg, I was shooting,” he said.

Smith kept shooting pictures, and caught the entire sequence, save for the actual shooting of the bear, on film. Kis has photocopies of the encounter in a spiral notebook.

Kis said at the time he didn’t feel like he was hurt that bad and could have driven out, but they called the ALERT helicopter and took him to the hospital.

Kis was recognized recently as part of a Veteran’s Day ceremony at Columbia Falls High School. He joined the Navy Air Corps in 1944 right out of high school instead of waiting to get drafted.

“I decided I wasn’t going to stay in some damn foxhole,” he said.

He was trained to fly a patrol bomber.

After the war, he worked in the woods as a sawyer, making $3 a thousand board feet. The pay turned out to be OK — one tree alone netted 8,000 board feet, he recalled.

“But (the work) kind of got to my back,” he said.

He was one of 76 game wardens chosen from a pool of more than 70 applicants in 1953, he recalled. He established himself early, he noted.

Once, he was checking elk permits of hunters near Butte when a guy cracked him up side the head from behind. Kis took another blow to the head before he turned around and fought back.

“Then I started in on him,” Kis recalled.

He knocked out what turned out to be prize fighter from Butte.

“It was the best thing that happened to me,” Kis said. After that he had a reputation as a game warden that shouldn’t be messed with.

Kis was also an accomplished photographer in his own right. His pictures were of professional quality for the day. He said he used Canon cameras.

“The only kind of camera that’s worth a damn,” he said.

He also had great compassion for animals. If he found orphaned bears or other creatures, he brought them home, nursed them back to health and release them back into the wild, he said.