ON THE DAY Clay Junior’s body was found near the Twelve Sleep River, Joe accompanied the Predator Attack Team as they hunted the bear.
The team consisted of four members: regional Game and Fish Department supervisor Brody Cress; Dubois game warden Tom Hoaglin; Cody game warden Bill Brodbeck; and Jennie Gordon, the agency’s large-carnivore specialist, based out of Lander. The team had arrived in a helicopter and Joe had met them at the Twelve Sleep County airport. He’d helped them load their equipment into two four-wheel-drive pickups. In addition to standard-issue clothing, weapons, communications equipment, and tactical clothing, armor, and other gear, they were armed with semiautomatic Smith & Wesson M&P rifles chambered in .308 Winchester and twenty-round magazines, and he’d offered to lead them to the scene on the Double D Ranch.
*
BRODY CRESS WAS an experienced LEO with twenty-two years of service and badge number one of fifty, the most senior warden still in the field. He was tall and lean with a weathered face and a distinctive handlebar mustache that made him look like an Old West gunfighter. Cress was the nominal commander of the team, and Joe sensed immediately that the man was liked and respected by the others. Cress had surprised him right away by greeting him with: “It’s an honor and a privilege to work alongside you, Joe.”
Tom Hoaglin wore badge number thirteen, meaning he was one badge senior to Joe. Like many wardens, Hoaglin had bounced around the state from district to district until landing in Dubois in northwest Wyoming. He was short, stout, and dark, with piercing eyes that belied an easy manner. Hoaglin was a deadeye marksman, a former sniper in Special Forces, and was responsible for the most grizzly bear and wolf kills on the team. He’d asked Joe when he might meet “this Nate Romanowski character,” because he said he’d heard so much about him.
“One never knows,” Joe replied. “He can be hard to track down.”
“Does he still carry that Freedom Arms .454 Casull revolver?”
“Yup.”
“That’s a hand cannon. I heard about that shootout last spring.”
“Yup.”
“Fucking amazing,” Hoaglin said.
“He’s settling down,” Joe said. “He’s legit now. You should have seen him before he got married and had a little girl.”
*
BILL BRODBECK WAS the youngest warden on the team, as well as the most fit and athletic. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and his high cheekbones and chin looked like they were carved out of white marble. He was a former bull rider at Montana State who had won a couple of rodeos. He proudly wore his Cody Stampede buckle with his uniform. He admitted to being tongue-tied when he first shook hands with Joe. “You’re the reason I became a game warden in the first place,” Brodbeck confessed. “I’ve been following your work for years.”
“Now I feel old and embarrassed,” Joe responded.
“Not as old as me,” Cress cut in.
“No one is,” Brodbeck said with a sly smile.
*
JENNIE GORDON HAD been raised on a ranch near Kaycee and gone on to achieve her PhD in fish, wildlife, and conservation biology at Colorado State University before becoming the preeminent expert and spokesman for the large-carnivore division. She had a mane of unruly red hair bound into a ponytail and she exuded intelligence and calmness, as well as empathy for the predators she studied, hunted, and sometimes had to kill. It was well known within the agency that Gordon had to sign off on any actions that dealt with problem carnivores, from trapping and relocating them to euthanizing the dangerous ones. Like Joe, she had three children, but they were all boys. They were in elementary and middle school in Lander.
Unlike any of the other team members, Gordon had experienced a grizzly bear attack firsthand ten years before when a sow ripped through her tent in the Slough Creek drainage in Yellowstone Park and bit her leg, hip, and buttocks before going away as suddenly as it had appeared. To this day, Joe had heard, Gordon refused to talk about the incident in public, and if it weren’t for her slight limp, no one would have guessed that it had happened.
“Promise me you’ll introduce me to your oldest daughter,” Gordon said to Joe. “I’ve always wanted to meet a master falconer. Raptors fascinate me, and the partnership between the falcon and the falconer can’t be replicated with any other predator.”
“I’m sure she’d like to meet you as well,” Joe said.
“Great,” Gordon said, looking at the mountains over Joe’s shoulder. “Now take us to where the attack took place.”
Joe was impressed by the calm professionalism of the team thus far, and he was struck by the contrast between them and the clown show in his own county law enforcement community since the sheriff had retired and skipped town.
*
JENNIE GORDON RODE with Joe in his pickup on the way to the ranch. Daisy made fast friends with her and rested her snout in her lap. Joe tried to call his dog off, but Gordon said she wouldn’t hear of it. So while stroking Daisy, she peppered Joe with questions.
“I read the preliminary incident report,” she said. “Are you sure it was only one bear?”
“I’m sure of nothing,” Joe said. “Only what I saw when I got there.”
“You said you saw tracks. Were they from one bear only?”
“I saw one good track in the mud. You probably saw the photo I sent along.”
“I did, but it’s hard to get much perspective. I hope the track is still there.”
“Me too,” Joe said. “I hope none of the locals stepped on it last night.”
“Is it possible this fisherman provoked the bear in any way that you could tell?”
“Not from what I could see. Like I wrote in the report, it appeared that he was attacked while wading in the river. I could see drag marks from the water to where the body was found. Plus, his clothes were still wet. There was no evidence that he made it to the bank before he was attacked. So I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t see a plausible scenario where he could have provoked a grizzly while standing in the river with a fly rod in his hand.”
“And no blood from what you could find?” she asked.
“Not that I could see. And I haven’t heard that the forensics tech found any, either.”
Gordon nodded. “I agree with you that the attack likely took place in the river, based on the death scene. When a human is attacked by a grizzly in the field, there is usually a lot of blood on the ground. But if it happened in water … Damn.”
“Meaning what?” Joe asked, although he guessed the answer.
“Meaning we may not be able to re-create the attack as it happened. It means both blood and DNA might have been washed away in the current.”
They turned off the highway onto an improved gravel road that took them beneath an arch for the Double D Ranch.
“From what you’ve told me,” she said, “it looks like we only have one choice here. We’ve got to find that grizzly bear and kill it.”
“That’s what I figured,” Joe said. “I don’t like killing bears.”
“None of us do,” she said. “But one thing I’ve learned about grizzly behavior is that the vast majority of bears know that they’re not supposed to attack a human. It’s hardwired into them to avoid that kind of scenario, and they’ll do anything they can to not have an interaction. But if a bear crosses that line and kills in a predatory nature, a behavioral switch can take place and it’s likely they’ll cross it again. So we have to kill them.”
As he drove, Joe felt a chill wash over him, thinking about what that bear had done to Clay Junior, and what it might do to somebody else.
*
ON THAT FIRST day after the body was found, the Predator Attack Team had formed an armed perimeter around Clay Junior’s remains while the body was exhumed by the county coroner’s team on the bank of the river and taken away. They did so, the team explained to the coroner, in case the bear was still lurking.
The day was still and cool, with barely a breeze in the canyon. The sky was cloudless.
Gordon approached the body bag on the gurney and unzipped it. Joe stayed well away.
“He’s got defensive wounds on his hands and arms,” she said as she examined the victim. “So he fought. But from what I can see, there are a half-dozen wounds on him that could have ended with death. The cranial wounds alone would have done it.”
Then she sealed up the bag and stepped away. She had asked that DNA samples be taken from the bite marks and sent separately to the Game and Fish Department forensics lab in Laramie to help identify the bear. She’d explained that it was possible the killer grizzly had been previously trapped, examined, or collared and could be found in the database of the interagency grizzly bear task force.
After the body was transported to town and the sheriff’s department personnel and town cops had left, Joe asked Gordon how likely it was that she could actually identify the killer bear.
“It’s possible,” she said.
“How many grizzlies have been assigned numbers?”
“Over eleven hundred since the 1970s.”
“That many?”
Gordon raised her eyebrows. “That many. Most people don’t realize that at the present time we have over a thousand grizzly bears in this state, maybe even eleven or twelve hundred. We’ve identified maybe a third of them to date, and at any given time we only have sixty to ninety bears marked with radio collars. A lot more have tattoos or ear tags, but we can’t keep track of them on a day-to-day basis.
“If we’re really lucky,” she said, “this bear was collared at some point and we can track it with radiotelemetry. Unfortunately, those collars only last a couple of years. But it’s possible the bear is marked with a lip tattoo and we’ll at least know where it came from and when it was trapped.”
“That means two-thirds of the bears have never been captured or marked,” Joe said.
“Yes,” Gordon said. “And maybe more.”
*
BEFORE PROCEEDING TO the river, Brody Cress had dug into his gear bag and handed Joe an armored vest.
“This is heavier than I’m used to,” Joe said as he pulled it on.
“It’s filled with ceramic plates. We all wear ’em.”
“Seems like it would stand up to a cannon blast.”
“We hope it will stand up to a grizzly bear bite,” Cress said. “A griz bite is something like eleven hundred pounds per square inch. Compare that to a human with a hundred and sixty-two PSI.”
Joe’s eyes got wide and he recalled the large puncture holes he’d seen on Clay Junior’s face and head.
“We’ve never had a bite on us,” Cress said, “and I hope like hell we never find out if these vests work or not.”
Cress went on to explain that the team would maneuver like a patrol squad in a war zone: tactical gear on, rifles out and ready, lapel mics and earpieces on to communicate.
He said, “I’ll take point and Bill will bring up the rear. Tom and Joe will take the flanks and we’ll move in unison in a diamond formation. Jennie will be our jewel in the center of the diamond.”
At that, Gordon moaned and rolled her eyes.
“We’ve got to protect our expert at all costs,” Cress said. “I’m only partly kidding.”
Joe agreed.
“What kind of rifle are you carrying?”
Joe showed him his bolt-action .338 Winchester Magnum.
“That’s fine for big game,” Cress said as he placed it aside. “But you’ll want more firepower. More rounds, anyway.”
Cress then handed Joe a spare .308 rifle. Like the others Joe had seen with the team, it had a bipod attached to the front stock and a red-dot scope.
“Go ahead and chamber a round,” Cress said. “You might not have the time when you need to.”
Joe did as instructed and caught a glimpse of a bright silver cartridge in the receiver as he armed the weapon.
“If you see movement in the brush, call it out immediately. You can’t believe how fast these bears can charge if they want to. It’s like a freight train coming right at you, and the more people we have shooting, the better.
“Sometimes, they’ll do a bluff charge,” he said. “They’ll come at you like a freight train and then pull up short. Don’t wait to find out if it’s a bluff in these circumstances. Jennie has given the okay to remove this target, and that’s what we’re here to do.”
Cress raised his left hand and patted his underarm with his right. “Aim for just behind the front shoulder if you can. Hit it in the heart or lungs. A headshot can work with these rifles, but sometimes the round can’t penetrate that thick skull. And don’t stop pulling the trigger until the target is down and not moving at all.”
Joe winced. Then he thought of Clay Junior.
*
“TELL ME,” JOE asked Gordon and Cress as they made their way through the open gate for the river and the exhumed cache, “how unusual is it for an attack to happen on the water?”
“It’s rare, but it’s not unheard of,” Cress said. “You can find a video on YouTube of a bear charging a boat on a river in Alaska. And we’ve had reports of grizzlies swimming after drift boats and rafts. In one instance, the fisherman in the boat grabbed an oar and started whacking the bear when it got too close. That happened just last summer.”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing before,” Joe said.
“We’ve learned to never say never when it comes to grizzly bears,” Gordon added.
“What is the likelihood that it’s still around?” Joe asked.
“Pretty good,” Cress answered. “Most of the bears we’ve hunted stick close to their kill. They’re very territorial that way.”
*
THEY FOUND THE exhumed cache as well as the bear track that Joe had described. The cache was dismantled when the coroner removed Clay Junior’s body, but the track was undisturbed. Gordon knelt down and measured it with a cell phone app.
“Not as large as a full-grown male,” she said. “So our killer is either a large yearling male or more likely a sow.”
“Can you guess how big it is?” Brodbeck asked her.
“Based on how deep the depression is, maybe three-fifty, three-eighty,” she said.
The snare Joe had set was sprung but empty, its steel cable coiled like a rattlesnake near the tree line.
“You had her for a while in your snare,” Hoaglin said to Joe. “You probably made her mad and she broke loose.”
“I’ve used these snares for black bears before,” Joe said. “But nothing this big.”
He tried to imagine the power it would have taken to snap the cable. Joe wasn’t sure that he could do it even by attaching the snare to the bumper of his truck and gunning the engine.
While Gordon took more photos of the cache, the track, and the broken snare, Cress retrieved a telemetry device from his backpack and powered it up.
“There’s no signal from a collar,” he said after a minute of tuning the handheld device.
Then: “Let’s go find her the old-fashioned way.”
*
JOE KEPT HIS eyes open and his senses at full alert as they departed the cache site. Brodbeck was apparently the best tracker on the team because he led the way and the others fell in naturally behind him. They carefully moved down the left bank to where the river bent to the east.
After an hour, Brodbeck said, “Nope. No tracks along the riverbank at all. She didn’t come down this way and she didn’t leave this way.”
“Then where is she?” Hoaglin asked.
Brodbeck pointed across the river toward the steep wooded slope. Joe followed his gesture. The intense fall colors made it hard to pick out individual objects through the foliage. Every dark boulder or sheet of rotting bark looked—for a second—like a bear.
“I think she ran off the same way she came down,” Brodbeck said.
“This is where I can help,” Joe said. “I’ll go back to my truck and get waders for everybody.”
“You’ve got five pairs of waders?” Cress asked, incredulous.
“I find them all the time where fisherman take them off and forget them,” Joe said with a shrug. “I’ve got a whole duffel bag full of them from over the years.”
*
AFTER WORKING THEIR way across the river over slippery smooth river rocks, the team made its first discovery when Brodbeck found a trail coming down the slope. The topsoil on the trail was churned up, and small pines were flattened in the path. Rocks had been dislodged from the soil, and on two flat spots, grizzly tracks could be clearly seen. One track was coming down the mountain and the other was going up.
“What’s this?” he asked, nudging a one-inch triangle-shaped piece of green fabric with the toe of his boot.
Joe bent down and studied it. “That’s Gore-Tex material,” he said. “From Clay Junior’s waders. It must have stuck to the bear’s teeth or claws and come off here.”
“Which meant she climbed back up the mountain sometime last night after she broke free of the snare,” Hoaglin said. “Which means we’ve got a unique situation: our bear didn’t hang around.”
“That’s unusual?” Joe asked Gordon.
“We’ve never hunted a hit-and-run bear before,” she said.
*
IT TOOK ANOTHER hour to climb the slope. They hiked on the left side of the bear path. Joe was out of breath by the time they reached the summit, and he reminded himself to take more breaks because he needed to be ready if they came face-to-face with the sow. He knew from experience how difficult it was to aim accurately when he was out of breath.
But there was no bear to be found on the top of the slope. Instead, a huge mountain meadow stretched out to the east until it was bordered by a wall of dense black timber that continued for miles. Beyond the timber, humpback peaks of the Bighorns stretched on for as far as they could see.
“We’re going to have to request aerial assistance,” Gordon said.
“Can we ask for a fixed-wing plane with an FLIR?” Joe asked.
FLIR was the acronym for forward-looking infrared, and Joe was familiar with the device because it was used by search and rescue teams to detect the thermal images of lost hunters in thick timber.
“An FLIR won’t work for finding a grizzly,” Gordon said. “The bear’s hair is too thick to emit much heat, and it’s easy to mistake a bear-sized boulder that retains heat from the sun from a grizzly. Believe me, there are a million bear-sized boulders on this mountain.” Then, suddenly, she exclaimed, “Oh no.”
Joe turned to her, expecting to see her pointing at the target grizzly in the distance. Instead, she had wheeled completely around and was gesturing toward their vehicles parked across the river. At the altitude they’d climbed, they could see them clearly: three green Wyoming Game and Fish Department pickups.
A gleaming white new-model SUV was slowly making its way across the hay meadow toward their trucks.
“Oh shit,” Cress said. “It’s them.”
“How’d they find us so fast?” Hoaglin asked.
“This has been all over the news,” Brodbeck said.
“Who are they?” Joe asked. “Do you recognize the vehicle?”
Gordon turned and scowled. “Oh, we know them all too well. They’re known as the Mama Bears. They’ve come to save the life of our killer.”
“I wish we’d found her,” Cress spat. “It’s gonna be a shit show now.”