MONTANA: Death in the Jack Pines

In the wilderness of western Montana, where big game roams a rugged land of granite and jack pine, two hunters tracked a trail of blood. For five hours Viv Squires and Ken Scott moved cautiously through the brush, trailing the huge brown grizzly bear they had wounded that morning. Viv Squires, 45, was no marksman, had not hunted for ten years; he carried a .30-30 Winchester carbine—a deer rifle and hardly better than a peashooter, he kept thinking, against the 8-ft., 700-lb. grizzly. But 29-year-old Ken Scott, lean, muscular and a good shot, felt confident. He carried a more powerful .30-06 rifle, and he wanted the grizzly in & bad way.

The Struggle. The trail led into a heavily thicketed clump of jack pine. There at 4 o’clock they saw the bear ahead. Squires fired; he thought he heard the thud of his slugs striking flesh. The bear came on, and Ken Scott coolly took aim. At 50 ft. he fired three times, then stopped.

“Viv!” he shouted. “My gun’s jammed. Keep firing!”

Squires emptied the rest of his seven-shot clip, started to feed a fresh clip into his carbine.

Ken Scott yelled: “Look out! He’s coming!”

Squires leaped away, scrambled into the trees, losing his Winchester and shells. He raced down the ravine. Ken Scott, for his part, thought the grizzly was chasing Squires. He knelt, opened his pocketknife, tried to clear his rifle. Then the bear was on him. The grizzly bit into his hand and face. It rolled over and over on his body, crushing and thrashing him with its killing weight. Four times the bear had Scott’s head in his mouth, tearing away each time at his scalp.

The Kill. In the silence of the ravine, Squires had stopped. He heard Scott’s shrieks, the grizzly’s bull-like roar. Should he go back? Could he go back? His Winchester lay empty in the thicket above. No. He must get help. Running and stumbling for a mile, he climbed exhausted on his horse, raced two miles for camp. Ninety minutes later, Squires and three hunters found Ken Scott, ragged and mauled, his scalp partly torn from his head, but still alive. The bear was gone. The hunters carried Scott to a clearing, made plans to send for a doctor. Silently, they huddled around a fire.

Then a twig snapped. Hunter Lloyd Cline shouted: “Here he comes! Run!”

Hunter Moe Embleton had a rifle. He whirled, aimed quickly for the grizzly’s neck, shot once. The bear fell a dozen yards away. Then Cline and another hunter shot again and again, until the bear lay still.

The Certainty. Squires and two others stayed with Ken Scott; the rest set out to get help. As the hours passed, Scott said: “God, I wish I’d die and get this over with.” Then Ken Scott died.

Last week in Fort Benton, the townsfolk were talking about Ken Scott and Viv Squires. Some people wanted to name the high school athletic field in Scott’s honor. Others planned to raffle off the bear’s head and give the money to his widow.

One day in school, Viv Squires’s twelve-year-old son Mark broke out in tears when a boy taunted him: “Your daddy’s a big old coward; he ran away.” When the teachers heard, they brought Mark to the front of the class, carefully explained that the best hunters in Fort Benton thought Viv Squires had done the right thing. Squires was certain too. He was sure—but was he sure? Said Ken Scott’s brother-in-law: “I feel sorrier for him than anyone.”