Bear attack in Montana leaves 1 dead, 2 injured

When he heard the first scream in a campground outside Yellowstone National Park, Don Wilhelm thought it was just teenagers, maybe a domestic dispute in the middlle of the night. The wildlife biologist from Texas tried to go back to sleep, stifling thoughts that a beast might be lurking outside his family's tent. Minutes later, another scream — this one coming from the next campsite over, where a bear had torn through a tent and sunk its teeth into the arm of the middle-aged Canadian woman inside. "First she said, "No!' Then we heard her say, 'It's a bear! I've been attacked by a bear!" said Wilhelm's wife, Paige. By that point, the bear already had ripped into another tent a few campsites away, chomping into the leg of a teenager who had been sleeping with his family. Wilhelm later would find out that a solo camper at the other end of the heavily occupied Soda Butte Campground had been killed in a rampage Wednesday that one wildlife officials described as the most brazen bear attack in the Yellowstone area since the 1980s. "It was like a nightmare, couldn't possibly happen," Paige Wilhelm said later. Added Don Wilhelm: "Words cannot describe what it's like to hear someone attacked by a bear." Wildlife officials still were attempting to capture the bear — or bears — late Wednesday evening, with five baited traps set up at the scene of the maulings...more