Missoula, MontanaKyler Alm froze. A branch snapped. Something was in the forest behind him. Alm, a 19-year-old hunter with a permit for a bull elk, nocked an arrow in his bow and waited. The tawny fur of a moving animal appeared through the trees, but something wasn’t right. Alm, who’d come alone into the woods, didn’t see antlers.

A moment later, the young hunter, two miles from his truck in the foothills of the Bitterroot Mountains of western Montana, came face to face with the largest bear he’d ever seen. Unlike the black bears that frequent the woods here, this one didn’t run. Because everyone knows grizzlies don’t live here—they haven’t inhabited the Bitterroots in 70 years—Alm did not have bear spray.

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