WOW!!! WHAT A DAY! Today at approximately 5:45am deputies responded to a call up Butler Creek for a bear stuck inside a home. When deputies arrived, they discovered this black bear had opened the door to the mudroom of this residence and somehow managed to deadbolt the door from inside. After being unable to leave, the bear began ripping the room apart but then decided he was tired and climbed up into the closet for a nap.
When deputies knocked on the window, the bear was not the least bit impressed. He slowly stretched, yawned and unamused looked toward the door. Eventually, deputies were able to unlock the door in hopes he would hop down and leave. However, their attempts were only met with more big bear yawns.
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks showed up to assist and tranquilized the bear so he could be relocated. The homeowners were glad he was removed in good health, but won’t soon forget when this intruder came looking for the bear necessities!
[Dusty] Crawford had his DNA tested through CRI Genetics, which aims to provide customers with a “biogeographical ancestry,” a description of where their genes fit into the overall story of the species.
For Crawford, the company traced his line back 55 generations with a 99 percent accuracy rate. That’s rare because the ancestry often is clouded that far back, according to the company.
It was, they told him, like finding Bigfoot, it was so unlikely.
The company has never been able to trace anyone’s ancestry in the Americas as far back as Crawford’s DNA, they told him.
Crawford understood from school that his Blackfeet ancestors must have come to the new world on the Bering Land Bridge during the Ice Age. Perhaps that’s true for some Blackfeet.
But Crawford’s DNA story suggests his ancestors came from the Pacific, traveled to the coast of South America and traveled north, according to CRI. That’s a theory anyway.
He’s part of MtDNA Haplogroup B2, which has a low frequency in Alaska and Canada and originated in Arizona about 17,000 years ago.
That group is one of four major Native American groups that spread across the continent. They’re called clans and traced back to four female ancestors, Ai, Ina, Chie and Sachi. Crawford’s DNA says he’s a descendant of Ina.
The DNA group’s closest relatives outside the Americas are in Southeast Asia.
Ina’s name comes from a Polynesian mythological figure, a representative of the “first woman.” She’s riding a shark on a $20 bill in the Cook Islands.
“Its path from the Americas is somewhat of a mystery as there are no frequencies of the haplogroup in either Alaska or Canada. Today this Native American line is found only in the Americas, with a strong frequency peak on the eastern coast of North America,†according to the DNA testing company.
The DNA test focused on mitochondria DNA and Crawford’s line of female ancestors.
Shelly Eli, a Piikani culture instructor at the Blackfeet Community College, said oral stories say “We’ve always been here, since time immemorial.â€
“There’s no oral stories that say we crossed a bridge or anything else,†she said.
She cited 2017 research from a mastodon site in California that scientists say puts humans in North America at least 100,000 years earlier than previously believed. Previous estimates suggested humans arrived 15,000 years ago.
Crawford also had an unusually high percent of Native American ancestry in his results, 83 percent. Some of that was a mix of Native threads, but, unusually, 73 percent was from the same heritage.
Besides his Native heritage, Crawford’s DNA was a remarkable global melting pot. His DNA was 9.8 percent European, 5.3 percent East Asian (mostly Japanese and Southern Han Chinese), 2 percent South Asian (Sri Lankan Tamil, Punjabi, Gujarati Indian and Bengali) and .2 percent African (Mende in Sierra Leone and African Caribbean).
On May 16 a lone wolf-like animal was shot and killed on a ranch outside Denton. With long grayish fur, a large head and an extended snout, the animal shared many of the same characteristics as a wolf; but its ears were too large, it’s legs and body too short, its fur uncharacteristic of that common to a wolf.
So far, the exact species is a mystery
So what was it? At this point, no one is 100 percent sure.
“We have no idea what this was until we get a DNA report back,” said Bruce Auchly, information manager for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. “It was near a rancher’s place, it was shot, and our game wardens went to investigate. The whole animal was sent to our lab in Bozeman. That’s the last I ever heard of it.”
Social media from around the Lewistown area was buzzing last week; with many people chiming in on what they believed the creature to be.
Grizzly cub? Dogman? Dire wolf? Or what?
“That’s a grizzly cub,” one commentator wrote. “Under a year and starving from the look.”
“Maybe a dire wolf,” wrote another, “because I don’t believe they are all gone.”
Speculation roamed as far as identifying that animal as a crypto-canid species said to roam the forests of North America.
A man shot a grizzly bear on his front porch near West Yellowstone last weekend after it broke into his garage to get a hanging elk carcass.
Andrea Jones, a spokeswoman for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said the incident happened on Sunday evening south of U.S. Highway 287 and near the Grayling Arm of Hebgen Lake. She said an agency investigation determined that the man shot the bear in self-defense.
“We have a pretty clear case of self-defense here,†Jones said.
Jones said the bear was a sow grizzly likely more than 15 years old. It broke through a metal door to get into a garage where an elk carcass was hanging.
The homeowner heard noise coming from the garage. He grabbed a gun and went onto the front porch to see what was going on.
“There was a bear not 10 paces from him on his porch,†Jones said.
Jones said the man told FWP investigators that the bear turned and began to approach him. He shot the bear dead.
Jones said investigators saw bloody paw prints around the property, including within 10 feet of the front door. They also saw paw prints on the home’s living room window.
The bear had been trapped by Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team researchers once before, but it didn’t have a history of run-ins with people.
Jones said it appeared that the garage was secured properly and that there was nothing the homeowner could have done differently.
She added that it’s important for people to recognize that both grizzly and black bears are still wandering around and trying to fatten up for the winter.
A grizzly bear mauled a bow hunter in southwestern Montana, slashing a 16-inch cut in his head that required 90 stitches to close.
“I could hear bones crunching, just like you read about,†said Tom Sommer, as he recovered in a Montana hospital on Tuesday afternoon.
Sommer said he and a hunting partner were looking for an elk they had been calling Monday morning when his partner spotted a grizzly bear feeding on an elk carcass in the southern end of the Gravelly Range, just north of the Idaho border.
“The bear just flat-out charged us,†Sommer said. He said it closed the 30-foot distance in 3 or 4 seconds.
His hunting partner deployed his bear spray, which slowed the bear’s charge. Sommer said he grabbed his canister so quickly that he couldn’t release the safety and he couldn’t afford to look down as the bear closed in. He ran around a tree twice and dropped his bear spray in the process.
Sommer then grabbed his pistol and turned to confront the bear.
“It bit my thigh, ran his claws through my wrist and proceeded to attack my head,†Sommer recalled Tuesday.
He still had his pistol in his hand and was going to shoot the bear in the neck when it swatted his arm down, Sommer said.
“Just like that it stopped. He stopped biting me, he got up and started to run away,†said Sommer, who splits his time among Idaho, Missouri and Florida.
His hunting partner had been able to deploy the rest of his bear spray, ending the attack Sommer estimated lasted about 25 seconds.
“It could have been a lot worse,†he said.
Sommer found his bear spray canister. His hunting partner had some blood coagulation powder and they made a turban, stopping the bleeding after about 15 minutes.
They walked a mile back to their spike camp and rode mules another 4 miles out to their base camp, followed by a two-hour ride in a pickup truck to get to the hospital in Ennis.
“Through it all I was very conscious, very level-headed and low key about it,†Sommer said. “Besides some scars, it doesn’t appear that I will have any problems.
Ferster was hoping to put his archery skills to good use September 11, 2016, but not on a bear, and certainly not in a life-or-death situation. He and his 11-year-old brother, Lane, were elk hunting in Montana’s Crazy Mountains when a black bear responded to their cow call.
“We weren’t even fifteen minutes out of the pickup and I decided to cow call twice,†Ferster told the Billings Gazette.
The bear burst from nearby cover and closed to within 15 yards in an instant. Ferster said it appeared to be after the “elk†and not after he and his brother. Ferster has had this occur before while elk hunting, so he raised his hands and shouted at the bear as he had done in the past.
This bear, however, wasn’t deterred.
The bear began pouncing up and down on its front legs, much like a grizzly does when it presses down on a recently killed animal. Ferster is used to dealing with grizzlies, too, so much so that he has quit hunting in several areas that held the bigger bears. But despite his usual caution, he had failed to bring either a handgun or bear spray with him on this elk hunt.
He drew his bow in readiness for a possible attack, but his movement caused the bear to surge toward him.
“He came at 100 miles an hour,†Ferster said. “I had a split second to aim and hit him in the only place that would stop him in his tracks.â€
That place was the eye. His arrow met the bear’s left eye, driving inward and upward through the bear’s head. It dropped the bear almost at Ferster’s feet, the broadhead lodged just inside its skull and the nock touching Ferster’s leg.
“A Montana grizzly bear attempts to retrieve an electrically charged, road-killed deer. The deer is electrified as an experiment to protect hunters’ game kills and, in turn, to minimize bear-human encounters.”
A Montana Rail Link train en-route from Kansas City to Renton, Washington derailed east of Superior Thursday afternoon, sending three cars of aircraft components into the Clark Fork River.
MRL spokeswoman Linda Frost says 19 cars derailed around 4p.m.
Thursday 18 miles east of Superior near Fish Creek Road and Interstate 90.
Frost tells MTN News a total of 19 cars derailed; seven cars with aircraft components, three cars carrying soybeans, three cars with denatured alcohol and the other seven were empty.
Frost says three aircraft components landed in the Clark Fork River. Frost says no alcohol or soybeans leaked.
The dead mountain lion and bighorn sheep were found on a closed road in Glacier National Park. Both evidently fell from somewhere very high on the cliffs above and to the right during the struggle which took place when the lion attacked the ram. The dead lion’s mouth can be seen to contain a large clump of the ram’s hair.
