Montana grizzly story similar to Idaho's
<p>Courtesy photo Rancher Rick Christy, who lives fifteen miles west of Fairfield, awoke to a disturbing sight on May 10. Two grizzly bears were using his flock of sheep as their breakfast. Christy is standing next to where he shot and killed one of the grizzlies. The pasture is just yards from his house. The two grizzlies kept running on either side of the cement wall (right) so he could never see both bears at once. After he shot the one bear the other finally left. He lost 6 out of 15 sheep in the raid.</p>
Editor's note: This story originally appeared in the Fairfield Sun Times in May. According to the paper's publisher, Rick Christy's father also shot and killed a grizzly, in 1982. The senior Christy was fined $2,500. He appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which found against him in 1989.
FAIRFIELD, Mont. - Area Farmer/Rancher Rick Christy, who lives about 15 miles west of Fairfield, was awakened by a phone call in the early morning hours Tuesday, May 10. It was his neighbors calling to let him know they saw bears running around the property and they were attacking something. They thought it might be the dogs at first but upon further investigation Christy realized the bears were killing his sheep.
He saw the first lamb killed in a canal just yards away from his house. As he went along the fence line he noticed a few more sheep lying on the ground and then he met up with two grizzlies who were still chasing down his sheep. They did not even care that he was there. He said at one point they were running parallel with him down the fence line. He had his .308 caliber rifle with him as he watched one of them batting a lamb around before it went in for the kill. There was nothing but a wire fence between him and the grizzlies. He could only see one grizzly at a time because there was a concrete wall that divided the pasture and they were running all over the place. He drew his rifle as he watched the one kill another sheep and took a shot. He thought he hit it in the aorta because it only flopped forward about 23 feet before going down. The other grizzly came around the corner to check things out. It slowly left the property looking behind him as if he was checking to see if his partner was going to follow him.
Christy called the Sheriff's Office right away. The Game Warden out of Choteau was the first on the scene followed by a Federal Investigator about an hour later. The Feds reviewed the rifle and returned it to Christy. They also turned the carcass over to the State. It was used as bait to trap the remaining bear for possible relocation. Bear traps are located out on the property where the attacks took place. As of last Thursday the other bear had not been located.
Christy was told that the bears were probably siblings and the one that was killed was about 3 and a half years old, about 340 pounds and 6 and a quarter inches across the paw. They are unmarked bears that have probably come up from the Sun River.
Christy said he has never killed a bear before, and as a matter of fact, is not really a hunter at all. He never carries his rifle around the property. He said, "I just felt like I had to protect my property when they wouldn't stop killing the sheep." He lost 6 sheep total with 5 of those being ewes. Two more had survived the attack but were too far gone to save so he had to put them down. His veterinarian helped save a couple of them. He had fifteen on the property. With the market up and down he does not know the actual loss but said it is probably somewhere around $200 a head. He was told that the FWP will submit his loss to the "Defender of Wildlife" program and may receive some compensation. He is, at this point, not sure what type of charges or fines (if any) he will receive for killing the grizzly. State law states it is legal to protect livestock.