Timothy Hilston Was Killed By These Three Grizzlies

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Timothy Hilston, a 54-year-old resident of Great Falls, Montana, was an experienced outdoorsman and hunter. Known for his love of the wilderness, Hilston often spent his free time exploring Montana’s vast backcountry and pursuing elk and deer in the Blackfoot-Clearwater Wildlife Management Area. On October 30, 2001, Hilston was on a hunting trip near Ovando, a small community with a rich history tied to the frontier days. Ovando’s location at the edge of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex makes it a popular starting point for hunters seeking elk and deer.
On the day of the attack, Hilston was equipped with a rifle and a hunting knife. However, he did not carry bear spray—a critical tool for deterring aggressive bears.
Hilston had wandered the valley and meadows for a few days before finding a bull elk that satisfied his goals. He painstakingly crept into shooting position and with a well placed shot mortally wounded the big bull. As Hilston watched the bull bolted across a meadow, then slowed and staggered before tipping over in it’s death throes.
Being an experienced hunter, Wilston checked the area for landmarks as reference points before making his way across the meadow. He found where the bull was standing before it was struck by his bullet, and followed the blood trail across the meadow. At the edge of the meadow, where some brush and young pines had grown, he found the bull carcass and prepared for the difficult work of gutting and butchering the animal.
As we have previously discussed on this channel, gutting any animal involves slicing its abdomen open from the animal’s anus to the top of its rib cage. On a larger animal, like an elk, the organs of the gut weigh a considerable amount, so opening up the rib cage makes the job of removal of the offal much easier. To get through the breastbone hunters can use a saw, a large knife or a tool like a hatchet to pop the ribs apart to allow for removal of the lungs, heart, esophogus and trachea or windpipe, all of which must be removed to prevent spoilage.
Unbeknownst to Wilston the area he was hunting was being patroled by a 350 pound sow grizzly and her 125 pounds yearling cubs and she had picked up the scent of the elk’s blood on the air.
Now this old gal was not unfamiliar with people. She was somewhere around 14 years old and had spent her entire life in the upper blackfoot valley. Each winter she would den in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area to the north. In 1999 she had been mistakenly caught in a snare by government trappers who were after a big boar griz who had been eating cattle on a nearby ranch. Apparently the run in with the trappers may have left a bad taste in her mouth for humans, and today she was looking for food for herself and her hungry cubs.
In prior months the sow and her cubs had honed the fine art of eating gut piles left by successful elk hunters in the area. The week before 6 members of an elk hunting party had returned to the location of the carcass they were packing out. The hunters heard the bears departing as they noisily approached and could see the bears had consumed about half the gut pile and chewed on the ribs of on the elk carcass overnight.
Alone in the wilderness, Wilston worked away, focused on gutting his elk, the sow and her cubs found the blood trail the bull had left as it bolted across the meadow. The evidence left at the scene doesn’t indicate whether the cubs bolted across the meadow ahead of the sow and she responded to their cries after discovering Wilston, or if the three bears converged on the man suddenly.
The sow ambushed Wilston from only a few yards leaving him no chance to reach for his hunting rifle to defend himself. She lept upon the hunter as he screamed and positioned his arms between himself and the bears jaws. In her furious efforts to end the struggle with the hunter, she clawed and bit at his hands and arms, until she had access to his head and neck.
A few days later Wilstons friends and family grew increasingly alarmed when he didn’t show up according to his plan. He had discussed where he would be hunting and the time frame he planned to keep, and now was nowhere to be found.
A search part was quickly organized and search and rescue parties as well as local law enforcement began canvassing Wilston’s hunting grounds. It wasn’t long before wildlife officers began gathering evidence at the attack scene and forensic analysis began. Wilston was dead and judging by the track evidence at the scene, officers may be hunting three man eating grizzlies.

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