Bear and moose cause mayhem

Wild kingdom rages in Willow man's back yard

By JOEL DAVIDSON-Frontiersman reporter

WILLOW-- At 2:30 a.m. on a recent Friday, Kenneth Turner awoke to the sound of his dog's frantic barking and, according to Alaska State Trooper Jimmy Jones, "All hell breaking loose in the back yard."

Turner, who lives on Hagion Shores Road near Jean Lake in Willow, told Jones that a grizzly sow with two cubs killed one of two moose calves on June 11 and dragged it to within 25 feet of Turner's back yard for the cubs to eat.

As the cubs ate the calf, the mother moose arrived in the yard to check on her slain calf. The grizzly sow then charged the mother moose and they began to fight.

Turner's dog was barking, so the grizzly diverted its attention from the mother moose and began chasing the dog, just about the time Turner walked out his back door, unarmed, to see what all the commotion was about.

The grizzly saw Turner and charged at him. Turner ran back inside, waited for a moment and then came out a second time to get his dog.

By this time, the mother moose had returned. Turner finally grabbed his dog and started dragging him back to the house while the grizzly was preoccupied with the mother moose. In all the excitement, Turner's dog broke free from his grasp.

By this time, Turner's wife met him near the back door and handed him a Winchester .300-caliber Magnum. With the gun in hand, Turner tried once more to grab his dog. The grizzly charged Turner again, but this time Turner shot it right between the eyes from 20 yards away. The grizzly continued toward Turner for another 11 yards before falling dead nine yards in front of him.

A moment later, with the threat of the grizzly removed, the mother moose charged Turner and he ran back inside -- still without his dog.

Turner returned to the yard once more, this time with a leash, and caught his dog. As he took his dog inside, he heard two shots fired in the air by his neighbor, who was attempting to scare a black bear with three cubs away from his screen door.

The frightened black bears ran past Turner's yard and off toward Jean Lake where the other moose calf, which had been left by its mother, was crying out. "That little moose crying out was like a dinner bell for those black bears," Jones said.

The mother moose left Turner's yard to run back and save her remaining calf from the black bears. Meanwhile, Turner's dog treed the two grizzly cubs.

About this time Jones arrived at Turner's house, thanks to a call placed to the troopers by his wife. Jones called for assistance from Geno Delfrate, a Fish and Game biologist, and the two men climbed the tree to pull the cubs down.

"You're supposed to pull on their bottom legs until they get tired and climb down," Jones said.

Jones and Delfrate pulled one of the cubs down and put it in a transport cage, but the cage was not designed for grizzly cubs and the little bear immediately destroyed the cage, broke free and climbed even higher into the tree with its sibling.

After fortifying the cage, Delfrate drugged the cubs with a low-dosage tranquilizer and then pulled them down from the tree. By the time they reached the bottom, the cubs were nearly immobile due to the drugs. They were also overheated from all the trauma, so Delfrate and Jones laid them in Jean Lake to cool down.

As soon as the cubs started wiggling, Jones and Delfrate put them in the fortified cage. Delfrate then put the cubs in his truck and drove them to the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage, where they joined two other recently orphaned grizzly cubs.

According to zoo officials, the cubs -- a male and a female -- will soon be transported to another zoo until they are old enough for release back into the wild.

Back at Turner's place, Jones skinned and gutted the grizzly with the help of a wildlife aide. The meat was donated to a man in Trapper Creek who likes to turn bear meat into sausage. Fish and Game will tan the hide and auction it at next year's Fur Rendezvous.

Contact Joel Davidson at joel.davidson@frontiersman.com.