.40 S&W stops Brown Bear Charge...
By DOUG O'HARRA
Anchorage Daily News
(Published: May 25, 2004)
Frank Bettine was walking his dog in the thick forest near his Rabbit Creek-area home about 9 p.m. Saturday when he heard a sound that raised the hair on the back of the neck.
The distinct snap of a branch in seemingly empty woods.
"I thought it was a moose," he said later. "Then I heard a woof."
Bettine's eyes locked with those of a brown bear standing alert about 30 yards uphill through newly leafed alder. In the second or two it took the bear to explode downhill, Bettine had time to slip a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol from his belt and take aim.
When the bear pivoted around a log about 20 feet away and showed no sign of stopping, Bettine fired one shot. The bear whirled and bolted back uphill.
Bettine called his dog, an English setter named Bearsheba, and retreated a few hundred yards to his home, northeast of Goldenview Drive and Rabbit Creek Road.
But the story, a glimpse of life and death among Anchorage's urban wildlife in spring, doesn't end there.
Unsure whether he had wounded the bear, Bettine called 911. Two Anchorage police officers returned with him to investigate, using a thermal imaging device that detects heat from living things. They ended up facing a furious charge by the same bear about 10:30 p.m. Officers Chris Mueller and Bradley Clark killed it with multiple shots from a Remington 870 shotgun and a .45-caliber pistol.
The three men worked until midnight hauling the carcass to a road with Bettine's four-wheeler. Then came another twist: volunteers salvaging the carcass for charity confirmed it was a sow that had been actively nursing.
So on Sunday, Bettine and his wife and neighbors searched the woods south of the Rabbit Creek. They wanted to find any cubs before it was too late.
An attorney and electrical engineer who has lived in the same Hillside home since 1984, Bettine has walked the same trails almost every day for years and loves living near wildlife. Bears had always run from him in the past. He didn't want any of them to die.
"Well, heck, I didn't want the cubs to starve to death," he said. "I was depressed enough to have to shoot the bear. If we can save the cubs, I want to do it."
On Sunday evening, Bettine found the cubs, up near the top of a tall spruce. Beneath the tree was another remarkable find: Duff and grass were torn up and rumpled, showing where the sow had scratched up a bed for herself and her offspring. It was only a few hundred yards from a suburban back yard with a swing set and children's toys.
The shredded carcass of a tiny moose calf lay in a hole, almost totally consumed. Blackened scat was piled nearby.
The incident began to make more sense. The sow had tucked her cubs into this dim refuge beneath alders and new devil's club, took down a meal, and defended the scene to her death.
"This was a double dose. Not only was it a brown bear, she had food and cubs," Bettine said. "It's the worst combination you could have."
This first confirmed bear kill of the season in Anchorage offered another warning that bears are now abroad in search of easy food and newborn moose calves.
"This is not a good time of year to be crashing through the brush," said state biologist Rick Sinnott, with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
People need to make noise and avoid dense forest, added Chugach State Park Chief Ranger Mike Goodwin. "This is the worst time, really. The moose calves are being dropped right now, and they're such a target for these bears."
On Monday morning, Chugach rangers investigated a report that a bear was eating a calf near the Glen Alps parking area. They have been monitoring a black bear harassing two sets of moose twins and their mothers in the McHugh Creek picnic area.
"That black bear has been on the campground hosts' car, scratching the dickens out of the roof," Goodwin said. "We've been down there three mornings trying to pop it (with bean bags) and get it out of there, but we keep missing it."
Other bears have been reported around town; a black bear fed along Campbell airstrip one evening last week. But a young brown bear that had been raiding garbage in neighborhoods near Eagle River has not been seen for more than a week. Sinnott worried someone had killed that bear.
On Sunday night Sinnott and assistant state biologist Jessy Coltrane checked on the cubs Bettine found. The cubs hugged the spruce trunk, about 60 to 70 feet above the ground, swaying in gusting winds. There was no way to get them down, Sinnott said.
Given the location, these cubs and their mother were almost certainly the same three animals that people had been reporting over the past two weeks, meandering out of Far North Bicentennial Park and across the Anchorage Hillside, Sinnott said. The sow was last reported near Huffman and Elmore roads on Friday night and probably moved to this location within a day of charging Bettine.
Under the circumstances, Sinnott said Bettine had little choice but to fire.
"It was totally justified," he said. "I probably would have done the same thing."
If the cubs can be found, they will be taken to the Alaska Zoo and held for adoption to a facility in the Lower 48, Sinnott said.
"He's welcome to bring them here," said zoo director Tex Edwards. "There's a good chance that either there's already a place for them or we'll find a place."
On Monday morning, Sinnott and Coltrane found that the cubs had disappeared. On Monday afternoon, the biologists returned with bear expert Sean Farley; still no sign.
If people see the cubs, they should call state Fish and Game. Don't try to pick them up, Sinnott said.
"That would be like grabbing onto the business end of a chain saw," he said. "They might look cute, but they won't be happy if someone grabs them."
On Monday afternoon, Bettine visited the site of the bear bed and walked the trail. He watched carefully when Bearsheba strained at the leash, as though something was off in the woods.
As a gentle rain began to fall on the lush green woods, Bettine studied the forest through binoculars and scanned the spruce trunk to its crown.
"They've got to be out there somewhere," he said.
