Bears cause ruckus at campground

By MICHAEL BECKER Chronicle Staff Writer

Roaming bears at a West Yellowstone campground kept wildlife officials and campers up late over the weekend, and sent a Billings man home with bite marks on his leg.

The weekend sightings began Friday night, when camper Dan Root was resting in a sleeping bag outside his tent at the KOA campground six miles west of West Yellowstone.

Root awoke with a yell when a curious bear bit him lightly on his leg. The yell frightened the bear away, but not before it had bitten into an empty cooler at a nearby campsite.

“The bear had bit the upper part of my leg and bit me good,” Root said. “It's pretty bruised up right now.”

Root called 911 but refused medical treatment.

The owner of the chomped cooler, Benjamin Allen, a U.S. Air Force captain stationed in Rapid City, S.D., said he heard an animal roaring in the distance Friday night - a sound KOA staff attributed to nearby cattle. Allen said he heard the cattle, too.

On Saturday night, Allen moved his family into a cabin and bolted the door. He said that at 1:40 a.m. Sunday, a bear came up to the cabin and fiddled with the latch.

“It pulled the latch down, it leaned on it, then it moved on,” Allen said. “I heard it go from cabin to cabin.

“If I didn't have the bolt locked, we would have had a 400-500 pound grizzly in the cabin.”

Allen was due to stay another night at the campground but left with his family Sunday. He said the KOA staff told him there were no bears in the area, and they refused him a refund on his reservation.

Root also said he was unhappy that the campground did not do more to warn campers of the bear danger.

“If the bear hadn't bit me, I probably wouldn't have ever bothered with it, but if it's aggressive enough to grab someone's leg in the middle of the night, they need to say something about that,” he said.

The campground's owner, Steve Linde, confirmed that a camper was bitten by a bear but said it was a black bear, not a grizzly.

“The black bear that bit this man on the leg was seen by five or six people,” Linde said.

Linde doubted Allen's account of a bear attempting to enter a cabin.

“We've examined the cabin,” Linde said. “There's no sign of that. I don't dispute it, but I don't think it's likely.”

Linde was not at the campground at the time of the sightings. He arrived at 2:30 a.m. Sunday and met with the campers who reported seeing the bear.

“We've had the campground for 26 years, and this has never happened,” he said.

Bears have been coming near the campground for the past two weeks, information that Linde said has been passed on to campers at the KOA.

“We're telling people not to store their food outside. Store their food inside their cabins or campers,” he said.

Some campers who were sleeping in tents during the incidents asked to be moved into cabins, and they were accommodated, Linde said.

Sam Sheppard, a regional warden captain with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said Root's bear bite was likely an exploratory one.

Bears will often bite something lightly to see if it is alive. Normally, a yell from a human is enough to scare the bare away.

“On the scale of wildlife encounters of this kind, it's kind of minor,” Sheppard said.

Sheppard said FWP has received reports of a grizzly sow and cub, and a black bear, in the area, and wardens have found grizzly hair nearby.

At this time of year, bears are getting ready for winter, Sheppard said. With drought conditions and a poor crop of berries in the mountains, the bears wander closer to towns.

Sheppard said FWP would not set a bear trap at the campground, as there was no guarantee it would trap the bear that bit Root.

“We have to think hard and long about any situation before we just throw a trap out,” he said.

Sheppard said FWP would monitor the situation at the campground daily and discuss it Monday.

“If there are further incidents in the area, we're going to do what it takes to get rid of it,” he said.

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