Grizzly greets forest visitors

The mount of an 830-pound grizzly bear that was struck and killed by a pickup truck west of Lincoln last fall is on display at the Helena National Forest’s Lincoln Ranger District office.

The huge bruin wouldn’t fit through the door, so the front window of the ranger station was removed this summer and four men carried the bear inside.

The six-pane window was replaced with a single-pane picture window to better display the 12-year-old bear.

Dennis and Sue Smrdel watched as the men struggled to move the bear inside the ranger station, noting that the bruin had no problem getting inside their shed a couple times.

“The first time he broke into our pump house, he went through the screen door and a solid wood door to eat 36 pounds of cat food that was sitting in one of those 30-gallon metal garbage cans,” Dennis Smrdel said. “He broke right back in a little while later; this time there wasn’t anything in there, but he went in a squished the cans.”

Smrdel set up an automatic camera on his property after the bear broke into his shed. His photos of the bear sniffing around the shed, taken a few weeks before the bear was killed, are on display at the ranger station.

Pat Shanley, wildlife biologist with the Lincoln district, said the bear was born in 1995 and fit with a radio collar and had his lip tattooed near Choteau a year later. He was hit by a car in 1997 and thought to be dead, but resurfaced during a DNA study near Lincoln in 2004.

Six taxidermists volunteered their time to complete the bear mount.