Page 48 - Wyoming's Grizzly Harvest - The Story the State Wants to Bury with the Bears

Wyoming’s Grizzly Harvest wasn’t talking about Ellsbury, but hunters in general when they enter grizzly habitat in the fall and do just about everything non-hunters are warned not to do when they hike in bear country. Certainly, DeBolt’s “you just break all those rules anyway” applies to Ellsbury and then some, and DeBolt knew before most that Ellsbury had not only broken the rules, but torn them up, burned and buried them September 6, 2013, as Browning disclosed that after killing the grizzly, Ellsbury drove to find cell service and then called DeBolt. DeBolt, a key contributor to Wyoming’s Grizzly Bear Management Plan, has become the local media’s go-to-guy whenever there is a grizzly story in Greater Yellowstone that fits the stereotypical narrative it perpetuates. Talkative as he is if a grizzly has charged a hunter who startled it, or killed a calf from a herd being run in biologically suitable grizzly habitat, DeBolt and his colleagues remained strangely silent on Ellsbury’s case. In the fall of 2013, a GOAL representative contacted WGFD and requested a press release about the grizzly death-by-mistaken-identity, but the Cody office – where Ellsbury worked – stated that there was no press release and feigned ignorance when questioned about the matter. Neither Talbott nor DeBolt issued a press release when Ellsbury entered his guilty pleas, and there was 48