A Death in Yellowstone: On the trail of a killer grizzly bear

While the mother bear was sedated, government biologists pulled hairs from her body, and took a vial of blood from her wrist. Then they trucked her to a large area at Yellowstone Headquarters known as the “bear room,” and kept her there in the tube for three days, fed and cared for by Yellowstone staff. Her cubs were being held in the bear room, too, but she couldn’t touch them, couldn’t cuff them affectionately with the back of her paw if they were misbehaving. On the morning of Oct. 2, 2011—the sow’s fourth day in captivity—the bear management team at Yellowstone did something they absolutely hate to do. Kerry Gunther, the head bear manager at Yellowstone, stopped by the headquarters with his wife. It was his 53rd birthday, and he wanted the company for the grim task he faced. His wife was keeping notes when Gunther and his technician injected the bear with a dose of Telazol, a larger helping of the same sedative they had used earlier to take the blood sample. Then one of them shot a captive deadbolt—the kind used in industrial slaughterhouses—directly into the animal's brain...more