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This is the second of two parts.
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The tale 24-year-old Brian Garst tells now about his night-time encounter with a marauding sow grizzly on the Anchorage Hillside in October sounds like other scary Alaska bear stories right up until the shooting starts. Then things get a little strange because in Garst's story the bear isn't charging when he opens fire. It's fleeing back to its cubs with a leg of moose picked up in Garst's yard. He shoots this bear twice in the rear end and kills it.
In trying to explain the shooting weeks later, Garst says he was defending his "property." Shooting a bear in defense of property, as well as life, is legal in the 49th state, but game meat is not considered "property." It is, in fact, illegal to shoot a bear to keep it from getting your game meat.
All of which raises a question or two about Garst's contention he shot the bear in defense of life and property. But his story has more to it than just this one sow on one night, and the rest of what he has to say warrants some consideration.
Before the sow, Garst said, there was another bear, an even bigger bear that was a neighborhood problem. Garst said that is the bear he thought he was shooting. Only later, only after the sow was dead, did Garst realize his mistake. He figured it out, he said, by looking at the size of the dead bear and the bear claw marks on his shed. The claw marks were 8 to 10 feet high, he said. The sow wasn't tall enough to make those marks. He's sure it was a different bear that "literally tore the fence off the side of the house."
"That bear was terrorizing this neighborhood," Garst said.
He woke up one night with the bear pounding on the side of the house only feet from where he was sleeping. "I was honestly afraid for my life," he said. "It's been a nuisance, and the state of Alaska hasn't done anything about it. I wish they had stuff they could do to actually help us out."
Garst's fear of the bears, though perhaps overblown, is not unfounded. Less then five miles due south from the Bear Valley house where he has been staying, a grizzly bear on July 1, 1995 killed popular Anchorage runners Marcie Trent, 77, and Larry Waldron, 45, as they hiked a trail in the McHugh Creek valley. The deadly attack so close to the city became among Anchorage's best-known bear maulings. There have been others.
Fifteen-year-old mountain biker Petra Davis was lucky to survive a bear attack in July 2008 a little more than five miles north of Bear Valley in Far North Bicenntennial Park. A number of other less serious attacks and near misses followed in the years after -- especially in and around Bicenntennial Park. Anchorage residents have been chased by bears, knocked down, clawed, chewed on, and sometimes scared witless. But since the Davis incident no one has been seriously injured.
From all indications, the bears really don't want trouble with people. But they do want food. They always want food. And people offer bears a great opportunity to find food: dog food, chickens, garbage, even bird seed. Bird seed is high in fat and protein. It's a strong draw for bears. Over the years, some Anchorage bears have learned to search out bird feeders for an easy snack. State officials have tried to encourage bird lovers to put away the feeders once bears emerge from their dens in the spring and leave the feeders in storage until the bears go to sleep for the winter. But not all do. Some like to feed the birds year round.
There are indications others might actually like the idea that bird feeders draw bears to their yard. On one end of the spectrum in Alaska are the quick-to-shoot Garsts of the world and on the other the end the Arnold Hangers. The Juneau man in September became the latest Alaskan convicted of feeding bears in an effort to make pets of them.
Bears do not make good pets, but they are animals easily conditioned. Feed them, intentionally or accidentally, and they will remember where that happened. After that, they will return again and again to check for the next meal.
Becoming a bear food stop
"They (the bears) were getting into our chicken feed," Garst said. "It wasn't the first time. They came right in the entryway. Literally, they're like in the house when they're in our chicken feed."
Or almost in the house. The entryway has no door. It sits open so that any bears passing through the neighborhood can easily smell that chicken feed. Animal feed of all sorts, biologists have observed, might be the best bear bait available. Some of those biologists would argue that what Garst did was bait the bear into his yard with chicken feed, and then kill it. But Garst doesn't see it that way. In his view, he was put in a situation where he thought he didn't have much choice but to shoot.
"There's neighbors actually saying, 'We're glad you got rid of that bear,'" he said.
About this there is little doubt. Across the Anchorage Hillside, there are people who would like to see fewer bears, sometimes a lot fewer bears. But these feelings are prone to shift when it comes to killing sows with cubs. Alaska Wildlife Troopers investigated the shooting last month. Then they cited Garst for illegally killing a bear and illegal possession of a bear hide.
"They were really nice," Garst said of the troopers. "They asked me why I didn't report it." Garst said he didn't know that was required. A skeptical Coltrane wonders if maybe Garst didn't just want a bear hide. She believes state wildlife Trooper John Cyr made the right decision in filing charges against Garst. Cyr had no comment.
Authorities, Coltrane said, only found out about the shooting after one of Garst's neighbors ratted him out. Garst, however, now insists he would have reported the bear killing if only he'd known he was supposed to.
Until this year, Garst said, he knew nothing about hunting, though he grew up in Wasilla. "We're from California," his mother, Theresa Timmons said by way of explanation, "though we've been here for 18 years.
"This was my first season of hunting," Garst added. "I only decided to do that to go moose hunting with my boss. I didn't know I had to turn the bear in."
Somehow, though, he did know enough about hunting to figure out how to skin a bear. He explained that he did this only as part of the process of disposing of the carcass. He wanted the meat of the sow out of his yard so it wouldn't attract yet more bears. The meat, he added, was inedible. "It smelled so bad," he said. And the hide wasn't much. "The most I would have kept off that thing was maybe the claws," Garst said.
The hide was put in a garbage bag he left at his parents' house in Wasilla. When troopers asked him about it, he told them where it was. "The troopers took the hide," Garst added. The state sells skins of both poached and DLP-killed bears at an annual auction. Garst isn't getting this hide or those claws.
Two-legged mama grizzlies
Theresa Timmons, Garst's mother, said she loves bears and can't imagine killing one. But she defends her son and said she understands why he felt he needed to kill the sow.
"I think it's very sad,'' she said. "I'm crushed. I think bears are mystical creatures. (But) the bears had been trying to get the chickens, and fences were being knocked over. Evidently they've got a lot of bears around there. I'd be freaked out. It was a very frightening situation."
Just listening to her son retell the story of what happened scared her. "I said, 'You were that close to a bear?' He was scared. I'm so glad he didn't get injured or something. I don't know what it's like on the (Anchorage) Hillside. Maybe they shouldn't have so many homes over there."
That's one view. Garst has another. He leans more toward the idea there shouldn't be so many bears where the people live. He is not alone in this belief. Anchorage has a large and healthy bear population. Some have grown tired of dealing with the animals. For a bear to be shot in the suburbs these days is not unusual. Some years a dozen or more are killed. Bears -- both black and brown/grizzly -- are potentially dangerous animals, and Alaska's "defense of life and property" law is pretty lenient.
When a Hillside homeowner shot a black bear sow in defense of property in June, no one batted an eye, though there was a bit of an uproar when Coltrane later killed the cubs. The biologist had no real choice. America these days is overrun with black bears. No zoos want them. Coltrane was lucky to find a facility willing to take the grizzly cubs. She almost had to shoot them, too. It is the only humane thing to do when no home is available.
Bear cubs left on their own in Alaska are destined to either starve to death or die in the teeth of other bears. This is the reality of Anchorage's oft-touted "Big Wild Life." The animals here do not live in a Disneyesque world. They live in an ancient world where fang and claw still rule. That animals sometimes die in this world is the norm. That people sometimes do the killing is accepted.
Had Garst shot the Bear Valley sow in the chest, promptly reported it, and claimed he feared for his life, it is doubtful he would have gotten in any trouble at all. If he has any legal problems, they stem mainly from his failure to report the shooting.
Mom believes
As if this story didn't have enough twists, there is another. Cyr messed up the paperwork when he filed the charges against Garst, and a court clerk tossed the case back to state prosecutors. The incident is now under review, said James Fayette, an assistant district attorney in Anchorage. What prosectors decide to do is unpredictable, but prosecutions of people who shoot bears while claiming self defense are rare in the 49th state. And self-defense is the claim Garst is making.
"I shot that bear in self defense," he said.
Can you believe him?
His mother does, but his past could make an objective observer wonder about his credibility.
Garst has been in summoned into court before to face harassment, assault, weapons and domestic violence charges. On paper at least, he doesn't appear the best of citizens, but then again, the charges date from years ago. He claims to have settled down since then. He's got a new wife, and he's starting over.
And he professes remorse at what happened in this case.
"I'm kind of glad the cubs are in a safe environment now," he said. "I don't mind paying a fine. I did make a mistake. The wrong bear got shot. That's exactly what happened. My wife kind of chewed me out a little bit for it."
Some who have now read the whole story will undoubtedly be as unhappy Garst's wife. Others might be thankful the Hillside has four less bears -- one dead, three others shipped out of the state. In Alaska, there are a lot of mixed feelings about bears.
Read Part 1
Contact Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com
Some of Garst's neighbors still think the bear killed at the home of longtime Bear Valley resident Paul Fiori was a lone boar that had been causing problems. Most seem unaware that the bear shot there was the sow killed by Fiori's new son-in-law, the sow that left the three orphan cubs that made the news.