The Bozeman Bear Incident

Sunday morning, I popped around the side of our house and entered a crime scene…

bear in garbage
mmm

bear tracks in bozeman
bear tracker

bear paw print
lil guy

…after careful deliberation, I concluded that the garbage perpetrator was a bear.

That was sort of a cool story and the end of the road, until the Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported that “hunters [were] cited for killing [a] black bear with bow on South 3rd Avenue” on the same night our trash was raided.

They were ‘hunting’ two blocks from our fucking house. Our house is about a five iron away from campus.

Fortunately, they caught the ‘hunters,’ and the Chronicle found someone less idiotic to write the follow-up article.

At the end of it all, two MSU students stuck four arrows via compound bow into a black bear that most likely weighed less than they do, at a less-than-intimidating 150 lbs. They both pleaded guilty, and were each sentenced to eight days in jail. One was fined $2700, the other $2500…hunting privileges revoked for 5 and 3.5 years respectively.

At least the guys didn’t fight the charges. It was a dangerous, asshole maneuver to pull the stunt in the first place, but they pleaded guilty and got it over with. The worst part of the whole thing may have been the bear’s choice of last meal. If he would have gone with our other dumpster, he would have found himself neck-deep in leftover Chinese, Mexican, and spare ribs. Could have gone out with a bang…