Grizzly spares bear hunter

Caught with his pants down, a Flathead Valley bow hunter recently survived a violent encounter with a mother grizzly bear east of Hungry Horse Reservoir.

Now Jebb Lackey, 29, considers surviving without any injuries a "second chance" and he says he's done with bear hunting for good.

Lackey said the May 15 incident left him in shock for several days, and he still considers it "pretty unbelievable" that he survived.

Lackey was bow hunting for black bears alone in one of his favorite drainages east of the reservoir, a place where he knew there were bears. Walking up a noisy creek surrounded by thick brush, he stopped for a break.

"I decided to stop on the side of the creek and take a leak," he said. "I was buttoning my pants up and I heard to my right, two huge crunches, two huge brush crashes. I looked to my right and the bear was already at full charge about 10 yards away. As I looked up at her, I saw two cubs running

away in the opposite direction."

Lackey said he reached for his .44 magnum pistol, but his gun belt was still unbuckled and when he pulled at the pistol, the holster and belt "all came loose" with it.

"In the half second that took, it wouldn't have done me a bit of good," he said. "She had the draw on me. I got caught with my pants down, literally."

Lackey said the bear hit him "like a ton of bricks," crushing into his right side as he raised his arm in defense.

"The absolute power and force of that hit just put me in awe," said Lackey, a timber framer for a local construction company. "I was not only in shock because there was a bear beating me into the ground, but the power was so impressive that I was just in awe. It knocked the wind out of me with that initial impact."

Lackey said he dropped to his stomach in brush and twigs that left him with some scratches. The bear quickly put its front paws "directly on my shoulder blades and put her nose directly on the back of my neck and made some growling, gurgling sounds. And just as I thought this is it, I'm going to die, she took off, after her cubs."

Lackey said he was still for a few minutes and eventually got up, and walked back to his truck "kind of in shock."

Along the way, he figured out that the bear did not bite him or claw at him at all; it just gave him a huge body check.

"I got back to my truck and realized that I had set my bow down to go to the bathroom, so I had to walk back there with every ounce of courage I could muster so I could retrieve my bow."

Although the encounter was quick, Lackey is certain that it involved a grizzly bear rather than a black bear. And he has no hard feelings toward the bear.

"It seemed to me she was just making sure I was out of commission….I'd like to stress that this wasn't a problem bear. I was putting myself in her living room, if you will, and she had every right to get me away from her cubs."

Lackey says he's an avid outdoorsman who will continue to hunt and fish - in fact, he went fly fishing in the same area the next day - but he's done hunting bears.

"To me - not to get too cheesy - but it's a spiritual situation. I can't justify going after them with that intent anymore … I can't describe it, the absolute power those animals possess. If she wanted me dead, there was nothing that would stop her. I take it like she let me live."

Lackey is convinced that the noisy creek and thick brush created perfect conditions for the surprise encounter, and he is convinced that his passiveness played a part in his survival.

"I didn't put up a bit of a fight," he said. "I think that's one thing that helped me."

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com