Under attack by 400-pound bear, Montana hunter sticks arm down its throat

It’s the latest of several conflicts in recent days, including one west of Kalispell where an elderly woman died from injuries incurred when a black bear attacked her inside her home, and another near Choteau where a bow hunter staved off more serious injuries by ramming his arm down a grizzly bear’s throat during an attack.

Chase Dellwo, 26, was using a crossbow to hunt elk with his brother in the rugged foothills of the Rocky Mountains in north-west Montana when he surprised an 180 kilogram male grizzly, Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks spokesman Bruce Auchly said.

The bear woke up, knocked Dellwo over, and bit the top of his head.

“I remembered an article that my grandmother gave me a long time ago that said large animals have bad gag reflexes,” he said.

“So I shoved my arm right down his throat”.

The bear left and Dellwo managed to sit up. Dellwo received staples and stitches in his head and face and treatment for deep puncture wounds in his leg.

In an interview with the Great Falls Tribune, Dellwo claims he pointed his bow and arrow at the disgruntled bear to scare it, but hoped to not have to shoot it.

Mr Dellwo, of Bellgrade Montana, did not see the sleeping bear until he was about one metre away, local newspaper the Great Falls Tribune reported. Chase was to walk up a narrow creek bed and try to push the herd of animals up to a ridge where Shane would wait. “I was lost. I cleared the blood out of my eyes”.

Though severely injured, Dellwo found his brother and drove to a nearby medical facility.

It worked. The bear left. But it returned a third time for another piece of Dellwo, he recalled what he had learned from his grandma.

“I forced myself to calm down and not to panic,” he said.

This fall’s bear-human encounters continued to grow over the weekend, when a man shot and killed a charging grizzly near Upper Whitefish Lake north of Olney.

Eventually the bear closed in on him. Chase was expected to be released from the hospital within a day or two of the attack.

Chase was not carrying bear spray and the windy conditions probably wouldn’t have allowed it to be effective.