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By WHITNEY ROYSTER Star-Tribune environmental reporter JACKSON -- Weston Scott crept through the Bridger-Teton National Forest Sunday looking to flush out an elk. It was morning, just before 11. In the flat, heavily timbered area, he heard a rustling. It was just 10 feet ahead behind some bushes. Scott said he was "kind of excited." He thought it was a big bull elk. It wasn't. It was a 600-pound grizzly bear. The first thing Scott saw was the bear's head, and it was coming at him. He drew up his rifle but managed only to get a shot off from about his hip when the bear was on top of him. "I think it went right over his head," he said from his hospital room in Idaho Falls on Wednesday. "That was all I had time to do. He was on me after that." As Scott, 32, fell to the ground, the bear bit him in the face. The animal took out four teeth on Scott's lower jaw and a one-inch portion of jawbone. Earlier reports in the Casper Star-Tribune incorrectly reported the nature of his injuries. Scott later told his wife, Tammy, that he was "sure" he was dead when he saw the bear so close. He told her the bear made no sounds -- no grunting or growling. "It was definitely coming after him to hurt him," she said. "It was coming at him with his mouth open." She said her husband never said anything about pain, possibly because his adrenaline kicked in immediately. "I can't imagine the absolute terror he must have experienced," she said. Tammy Scott said after the bear bit her husband's face, the animal continued to knock him around. "He's got surface wounds kind of everywhere" -- on his knees, side and back, she said. "Looking at him, you know he got rolled around by a bear." The bear ultimately swung one last time at Scott, pushing him between two trees, and left. Scott got up and ran out of the woods, about a quarter of a mile, he said. On his way out, he could see the bear still in the area. Officials say the animal was then killed by a hunting companion who said the bear was approaching him. The attack happened in Hunt Area 83, an area called the Moccasin Basin near Dubois. He hunts there every year with family and friends. The Scotts have homes in Gillette and Laramie. Tammy Scott said on Friday a member of the hunting party saw a bear. She said the group knows the area is grizzly bear country, and every year a gut pile or head will be dragged off by a bear. "There are usually signs of bears around," she said. "They know they're there." Her husband carries pepper spray, but he didn't have time to pull it out of the holster during the attack Sunday. After Scott ran out of the woods, his friends called emergency dispatchers, and a helicopter came to the area within an hour and a half and took him to Idaho Falls. Scott told his wife he doesn't intend to go back to the area to hunt. He is the second hunter to be mauled in less than two weeks in the northwest corner of the state. Wally Cash of Gillette was mauled Sept. 21 outside Moran. "I don't think he will hunt in grizzly bear country again," Tammy Scott said. "One of the first things out of his mouth was, 'I don't ever want to feel like that again.'" Environmental reporter Whitney Royster can be reached at (307) 734-0260 or at royster@trib.com.
