Hugh Glass, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, is attacked by a bear in "The Revenant." Montana Quarterly Editor Scott McMillan consulted on the computer-generated graphics in the scene.
Editor's note: This is the third of the four-part "Predators of the Prairie" series from Adams MultiMedia. Next: Ranching near a wildlife reserve.
Although his physical wounds healed within weeks, a grizzly attack in Paradise Valley south of Livingston during hunting season haunts Emigrant resident Charles Taliaferro some 16 years later.
"I used to throw a sleeping bag down, carry a tarp with me and camp wherever I wanted," he said. "I don't feel comfortable doing that anymore."
It was nearly four years before Taliaferro, 66, returned to the scene of the attack on Big Creek Trail, which follows a creek of the same name through dense pine trees on the Gallatin National Forest.
It was around 9 a.m. on the opening day of elk rifle season in late October 2009. Snow blanketed the Gallatin Range when Taliaferro and his son-in-law parked where the plowing ends and the private Mountain Sky Guest Ranch meets public national forest land.
The duo split up once they reached the main trail.
"[My son in-law] went up one side of the creek and I went up the other," Taliferro said. "I saw the sow down in the bottom of [the creek bed]. She was a long way from me and I didn't worry about it. I continued hunting, walking down the trail."
The mother grizzly with a cub in tow caught Taliaferro's full attention when she charged him.
"Her and her cub came running at me," he said. "I took a few steps toward a tree. I thought I could climb it. I thought I could make it to that tree in the snow."
Taliaferro slipped and fell, and the hunter became the hunted.
"When I slipped and fell, I swung from the hip," he said.
Taiiaferro blindly fired his .300 caliber Winchester rifle at the charging grizzly. The self-defense attempt was futile.
"She was on me."
Taliaferro actually counts himself lucky the shot missed his target. He believes hitting the bear would not have stopped it and instead only make it angrier.
"If I'd hit her, I think she'd have done me some serious damage," Taliaferro said. "She knocked me 30 feet to the other side of the tree, grabbed me by the thigh, shaking me like a dog shakes a rat. She dropped me and shook me more."
"She whooped the crap out of me."
Taliaferro remembers curling into a ball to protect his vital organs. There wasn't time to think or feel.
"My only mode was, 'Oh sh-t'. I don't remember being scared. It happened so quick. The only thing I could think of was playing dead. I was almost [already] there."
As quickly as it started, the nearly fatal encounter was over. The grizzly calmed, nosing Taliaferro's pack a few times before shouldering away.
"I reached in my pack, took my cellphone out, and called my son-in-law," he said. "He was a quarter of a mile away. I sat up, looked at the damage, tied my hunting vest around my leg the best I could and started limping out of there. I didn't bleed much. It was all just thigh muscle."
Taliaferro went to Livingston HealthCare, where doctors used a scalpel to reopen the wounds on his thigh and leg to flush and disinfect the area, before closing it with 40 staples.
"The ranch manager told me later someone jumped a sow at daylight on Big Creek," he said.
Taliaferro theorized the bear with a cub was running scared without a direction to turn away from hunters in the woods.
"I don't hold it against her," he said. "I just think there's just too many of them. She'd been jumped. Every time she went anywhere she ran into hunters. She ran into my son-in-law, turned and ran from him, and ran into me. I was just in her path. She made sure her cub could get away from me."
"Unfortunately, they've gotten used to the sound of a gun like a dinner bell. Bears can put two and two together and figure out that shooting means food."
Yellowstone Attack
Emigrant resident Sarah Muller, 67, still has pain in her chest from broken ribs that never fully healed from a grizzly attack that left her scarred in 1992.
"It's not constant," said Muller, who owns Montana Homestead Cabins at the base of Emigrant Gulch in Old Chico. "You learn to deal with the pain. Obviously where I live we get bears down here. I still go camping all the time but pretty much stay in my van and not in a tent. I always try to go with another person."
"It was my own fault what happened," she added. "I respect bears. I love seeing them in the wild, but not up close and personal like I did in '92."
A former trail crew member before the incident, Muller was hiking back alone after a backcountry camping trip in the northeast corner of Yellowstone National Park, with a group that included her boyfriend. She was mauled less than an hour after separating from the group.
"Sarah first saw the bears, a female grizzly with two cubs, from about forty feet away," Livingston-based journalist Scott McMillion wrote in his book "Mark of the Grizzly," a compilation of grizzly bear encounters.
McMillion is the editor at Montana Quarterly magazine, which publishes stories, essays, fiction and photography about the state's culture, history and conservation.
"They were grazing through a meadow filled with brilliant yellow wildflowers and lush waist-high grasses," reads the chapter. "It was about 10:20 in the morning ... there they were, clambering up the south side of a small hill while Sarah strode up the north side. They met just before each party reached the peak, and Sarah realized first what was up. She froze, her heart hammered. She didn't know what to do ... Then one of the cubs yelled."
"The sow lifted her head, and Sarah saw trouble. The bear never broke stride. With nothing but a stuff sack in her hand, she raised it, tried to cram it in the bear's mouth, but the animal went right past it and sank its teeth in her pretty face. Bites broke her left arm and tore open her shoulder and her legs. One crushed seven ribs ... collapsing a lung. The bear shook her like a terrier does a rat."
"The mechanics of a bear attack are similar to a dog attack," said McMillion, who consulted on the computer-generated bear attack scene in "The Revenant," a 2015 movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. "Grizzlies are incredibly strong. A 400-pound bear, that is a lot of muscle mass."
"She heard cracking sounds when the bear bit into her ribs, but the crunching of teeth in her skull, the bear's top teeth in the back of her head, the bottom ones in her eye and forehead, was even louder," continues McMillion in his book. "The bear stopped biting her. The attack started and finished in seconds."
"She tried to look, but she couldn't see; there was too much blood in her eyes. Her nose was crushed. One of the bear's canine teeth had sunk through her eye socket and sinus, making a small puncture in her brain cavity."
Luckily, Muller's boyfriend later arrived. He galloped his horse, reaching a ranger with a radio. The ranger called for help.
"I was not making noise," said Muller, citing her biggest regret. "If I had been making noise that day walking up the trail, I am pretty sure [the bear] would have heard me and gone away. It is hard to say, but chances are that is what she would have done. I let my defenses down, had no [bear] spray with me. I gave it back to the Park Service when I quit.
"It was my own fault and a lesson learned."
Muller keeps McMillion's book in her three vacation rental units and two bear spray cans in each cabin.
"I explain how to use [the bear spray], and [encourage them to] read the story if they want," she said. "I tell them not to read it before bed because I don't want them to have any nightmares. I want to educate people. They have no clue how dangerous, powerful and fast-moving [a grizzly] can be. You want to see wildlife but you don't want to be mauled by a bear.