Yellowstone employee injured in grizzly attack

BILLINGS – A Yellowstone National Park employee managed to shoot and wound a grizzly bear as it attacked him during a weekend hunting trip north of the park, a Yellowstone spokesman said Monday.

Ken Meyer, the park’s safety officer, was recovering from surgery Monday after his run-in with the female grizzly near Gardiner, said park spokesman Al Nash. He suffered “deep injuries” including bites to his back and other injuries to his left leg, stomach and forearms, Nash said.

State game wardens continued to search for the bear Monday.

Meyer, who was being treated at Livingston Memorial Hospital, told Nash that he had just started down a trail Sunday to go black bear hunting in the Gallatin National Forest when “the sow came out of nowhere, launched at him and knocked him to the ground.”

“As he put it, they wrestled for a while and there were two cubs there, and at some point the cubs made a noise and she left him to check on her cubs. He crawled over to his rifle and she came back and at first stopped about five feet in front of him and then came back after him again,” Nash said.

“He fired he believes three shots, and believes he struck the bear at least once. The bear rolled over into the creek and he thought she was dead,” Nash said.

Meyer managed to walk back to his vehicle and drive back to his residence inside the park, where his wife called for medical help.

A spokeswoman for the Livingston hospital, Sandi Marlow, said Meyer’s family had asked doctors not to release any information on his condition. Nash said Monday that Meyer “sounds OK” and “is in good spirits despite the fact that he hurts a lot.”

The grizzly attack was the third in the greater Yellowstone area this year. On May 23, a Bozeman photographer suffered serious injuries when he was mauled inside the park. And in June, a Wyoming man suffered moderate injuries during an attack at Grand Teton National Park south of Yellowstone.

Following Sunday’s attack, Gallatin National Forest officials closed the area where the attack occurred out of fear that a wounded bear might injure others. That closure will remain in effect until the bear is found, Forest Service spokeswoman Marna Daley said Monday.

Members of the Forest Service, Park Service and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks searched for the bear on the ground and from the air on Sunday, but later pulled back out of safety concerns, Daley said.

On Monday, game wardens observed the area through binoculars to avoid a direct encounter, said Mel Frost with Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

No decision had been made on what to do with the animal if it is found.

“If it’s an injured bear and it can’t survive, perhaps we will euthanize it,” Frost said. “If it’s not injured, the question is, ‘What was happening? Why did this bear attack this hunter?’ “