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Bear ate woodsman, but did it kill him?
MYSTERY: Bart Schleyer's remains found in scat; was he attacked or scavenged?
By CRAIG MEDRED, Anchorage Daily News
December 19, 2004
Analysis of bear scat found along the shores of a remote lake in the Yukon Territory has confirmed that experienced Alaska woodsman and predator scientist Bart Schleyer was eaten by a grizzly bear.
Exactly how remains a mystery.
Schleyer, who had spent most of his professional life working with dangerous bears and even more dangerous tigers, disappeared in mid-September while on a moose hunting trip to the Reid Lakes, 15 miles east of a tiny cluster of human habitation along the Klondike Highway known as Stewart Crossing.
An initial search by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police found his camp along one of the lakes, but turned up no sign of Schleyer. Canadian friends who went back for a better look after the Mounties left found more.
Near where Schleyer's boat was tied to the shoreline down the lake from his camp, friend Dib Williams of Whitehorse and Wayne Curry, a pilot from Pelly Crossing, found arrows in a homemade quiver and Schleyer's meticulously crafted, homemade bow.
Next to the bow and arrows, Curry said, was a dry bag full of gear with a crease in it like someone had been sitting there. Curry and Williams thought it looked like the sort of place where someone might sit to try and call bull moose.
Both thought the scene looked as if Schleyer could have gotten up and wandered away just minutes before. But they had an uneasy feeling, because they knew by then he'd been missing for days.
Further investigation, Curry said, revealed an even more troubling discovery -- a face mask with blood and hair in it.
Curry and Williams decided to fly back to civilization and summon the Mounties. The law enforcement officials arrived back at the Reid Lakes on Oct. 3 with Yukon conservation officers and enough civilian volunteers to start a grid search of the area near the face mask.
GRISLY CLUES
The search turned up bear and wolf sign, a ball cap, a pair of camouflage pants, a camera, a few bones and part of a skull. The skull, with teeth, made identification possible.
From all indications, the discovery of the skull also pretty much brought the search to an end. Searchers never returned to Reid Lakes after finding the few bones.
Clothing, or remnants of clothing, from Schleyer's upper body were never found. Nor were his boots. Nor most of his bones.
The bones found were shipped to a Vancouver pathologist for examination. The pathologist didn't have much to work with in trying to determine how Schleyer might have died, said Yukon coroner Sharon Hanley. All he could conclude,she added, was that the bones had been gnawed on by animals -- one of which, based on the size of bite marks, was a bear.
"We don't know if other animals scavenged besides the bear,'' Hanley added.
The official cause of death was "undetermined,'' she added. "We didn't really have any choice. It's not all that common to have bear maulings.''
Wolf and fox tracks were found in the area of Schleyer's remains. And some bear scat was bagged by a Yukon conservation officer at the scene. The scat turned out to contain bits of human flesh, proving that a bear had indeed eaten Schleyer.
Whether it killed him, however, remains an open question. Wildlife experts have staked out opposite camps. All agree that no one will ever know for sure what happened, but there the agreement ends.
WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENED?
One group contends an attack seems likely. They argue that if Schleyer was calling moose, something he liked to do, he would have been broadcasting his presence to any bear within hundreds of acres, whereas if he was dead, the bear would have to find a carcass that could take weeks to give off significant odor, given the chilly fall temperatures.
The other group, however, believes an attack unlikely. They note Schleyer's balaclava contained little blood and hair, and his pants even less. How, they wonder, could a bear attack a man and get his pants off without them being soaked in blood? And if an attacking bear grabbed Schleyer by the head, which is what bears usually do, why wasn't the balaclava blood-soaked?
Head wounds normally bleed profusely, observed Schleyer's friend John Hechtel, a wildlife biologist who has investigated a number of bear maulings over the years.
"Everything, to me, points to the idea he was scavenged,'' Hechtel said. "Nothing to me points to an animal attacking.''
Hechtel believes Schleyer must have died from something before the bear found his body. What is impossible to say. By all indications, the 49-year-old hunter was in superb physical condition.
"There was no health history (of problems),'' Hanley said. "He was a pretty active man.''
That leaves the possibility of an accident, a freak medical problem such as an aneurysm, or foul play.
"At this stage of the game, I don't think you can eliminate anything completely,'' Hechtel said.
The idea of foul play might, at first, seem farfetched, Hechtel admitted, but Schleyer wasn't camped all that far from the Klondike Highway, and there is no telling who might have landed a small, single-engine floatplane on the lake where he was camped.
Still, Hechtel and John Murnane, a government wildlife veterinarian in Montana and a friend of Schleyer's, consider foul play highly unlikely.
"(Bart) is like the nicest guy in the world,'' Murnane said. "Bart had worked all over the world and uniformly was able to make friends. Foul play doesn't seem to be at the top of the list.''
But, he and Hechtel agree, it can't be ruled out, either.
"Nobody knows,'' Murnane said. "Nobody was there. All of those (possibilities) need to be explored ... and sorted out. I hope, and assume, everyone has done their job well.''
UGLY POSSIBILITIES
Brigittee Parker, a spokeswoman for the Mounties in Whitehorse, said the case remains open, but the organization leans toward the idea Schleyer was attacked and killed by a bear.
"There's no foul play suspected,'' she said. "Everything at the scene suggested a bear attack and did not suggest ... foul play.''
Absent the possibility of foul play, there are only two possible scenarios that remain to explain Schleyer's death:
• He was hunted, killed and eaten by a predatory grizzly bear.
• He died from an unknown illness or accident. A bear found his body afterward and fed on it.
Hechtel considers the first possibility the least likely. Predatory grizzly bear attacks are rare, and Schleyer was a superb woodsman.
"A bear attack,'' Hechtel said, "tends to be a bloody affair. The absence of blood. That's sort of weird."
There's more.
Hanley said the Vancouver pathologist who examined Schleyer's remains found no tooth punctures in his skull nor indications of scratch marks from teeth. When bears attack people, they almost always go for the head.
"None of it, really, smacks to me of a bear attack,'' Hechtel said.
BEAR FACTS
More likely, he contends, is scavenging by a bear, which would come after someone had died and their heart stopped beating. There would be much less blood in that case, he noted.
Murnane is slightly more open to the idea of Schleyer being attacked and killed, though he, too, is skeptical.
Still, he noted Schleyer himself had documented grizzly bears hunting elk during the rut near Yellowstone National Park. Could it be there are also grizzlies that hunt moose during the breeding seasons? He wonders.
"You're out in the woods, scentless, soliciting a predatory response'' by grunting on a moose call, he said. "An attack is a plausible scenario.''
Tom Smith, a scientist with the U.S. Biological Survey now at work on a paper on the subject of bear attacks in Alaska, agrees.
Grizzlies that range large territories with limited food supplies, such as the Yukon, are significantly more likely to attack people than coastal brown bears, which become somewhat socialized by regular encounters with other bears, he said.
Likewise, he added, hunters who move quietly about the woods trying to minimize their human scent are the people most likely to be attacked.
And Schleyer was hunting in habitat where bears are most likely to attack.
"It wouldn't surprise me,'' Smith said, if Schleyer was attacked, killed and eaten by a grizzly.
A LEGITIMATE MYSTERY
Smith dismisses the idea that Schleyer's skills as a woodsman would provide any protection against being stalked.
"A bear couldn't have snuck up on him?'' Smith asked. "Give me a break. They're quiet. Nobody's above it.''
Smith recounted the experience of another knowledgeable hunter and bear researcher studying brown bears along the Katmai Coast several years ago. While the man was watching the bears in front of him, another eased up unnoticed to within feet behind.
The scientist, Smith said, nearly had a heart attack when he got up to move, turned around, and discovered a bear almost within arm's length.
A bear responding to a moose call, thinking it was stalking a moose, might be even quieter. It's not hard to image such a bear killing a hunter, Smith said.
But, he agrees with others, that no one will ever know if that is what happened.
There just isn't enough information.
"It's a tragic story,'' Murnane said.
"At this stage of the game,'' Hechtel said, "I don't think you can eliminate anything completely.''
That makes the cause of Schleyer's death a legitimate mystery.
"It is and always will remain,'' barring new evidence, Hanley added.
Daily News Outdoor editor Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com.
MYSTERY: Bart Schleyer's remains found in scat; was he attacked or scavenged?
By CRAIG MEDRED, Anchorage Daily News
December 19, 2004
Analysis of bear scat found along the shores of a remote lake in the Yukon Territory has confirmed that experienced Alaska woodsman and predator scientist Bart Schleyer was eaten by a grizzly bear.
Exactly how remains a mystery.
Schleyer, who had spent most of his professional life working with dangerous bears and even more dangerous tigers, disappeared in mid-September while on a moose hunting trip to the Reid Lakes, 15 miles east of a tiny cluster of human habitation along the Klondike Highway known as Stewart Crossing.
An initial search by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police found his camp along one of the lakes, but turned up no sign of Schleyer. Canadian friends who went back for a better look after the Mounties left found more.
Near where Schleyer's boat was tied to the shoreline down the lake from his camp, friend Dib Williams of Whitehorse and Wayne Curry, a pilot from Pelly Crossing, found arrows in a homemade quiver and Schleyer's meticulously crafted, homemade bow.
Next to the bow and arrows, Curry said, was a dry bag full of gear with a crease in it like someone had been sitting there. Curry and Williams thought it looked like the sort of place where someone might sit to try and call bull moose.
Both thought the scene looked as if Schleyer could have gotten up and wandered away just minutes before. But they had an uneasy feeling, because they knew by then he'd been missing for days.
Further investigation, Curry said, revealed an even more troubling discovery -- a face mask with blood and hair in it.
Curry and Williams decided to fly back to civilization and summon the Mounties. The law enforcement officials arrived back at the Reid Lakes on Oct. 3 with Yukon conservation officers and enough civilian volunteers to start a grid search of the area near the face mask.
GRISLY CLUES
The search turned up bear and wolf sign, a ball cap, a pair of camouflage pants, a camera, a few bones and part of a skull. The skull, with teeth, made identification possible.
From all indications, the discovery of the skull also pretty much brought the search to an end. Searchers never returned to Reid Lakes after finding the few bones.
Clothing, or remnants of clothing, from Schleyer's upper body were never found. Nor were his boots. Nor most of his bones.
The bones found were shipped to a Vancouver pathologist for examination. The pathologist didn't have much to work with in trying to determine how Schleyer might have died, said Yukon coroner Sharon Hanley. All he could conclude,she added, was that the bones had been gnawed on by animals -- one of which, based on the size of bite marks, was a bear.
"We don't know if other animals scavenged besides the bear,'' Hanley added.
The official cause of death was "undetermined,'' she added. "We didn't really have any choice. It's not all that common to have bear maulings.''
Wolf and fox tracks were found in the area of Schleyer's remains. And some bear scat was bagged by a Yukon conservation officer at the scene. The scat turned out to contain bits of human flesh, proving that a bear had indeed eaten Schleyer.
Whether it killed him, however, remains an open question. Wildlife experts have staked out opposite camps. All agree that no one will ever know for sure what happened, but there the agreement ends.
WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENED?
One group contends an attack seems likely. They argue that if Schleyer was calling moose, something he liked to do, he would have been broadcasting his presence to any bear within hundreds of acres, whereas if he was dead, the bear would have to find a carcass that could take weeks to give off significant odor, given the chilly fall temperatures.
The other group, however, believes an attack unlikely. They note Schleyer's balaclava contained little blood and hair, and his pants even less. How, they wonder, could a bear attack a man and get his pants off without them being soaked in blood? And if an attacking bear grabbed Schleyer by the head, which is what bears usually do, why wasn't the balaclava blood-soaked?
Head wounds normally bleed profusely, observed Schleyer's friend John Hechtel, a wildlife biologist who has investigated a number of bear maulings over the years.
"Everything, to me, points to the idea he was scavenged,'' Hechtel said. "Nothing to me points to an animal attacking.''
Hechtel believes Schleyer must have died from something before the bear found his body. What is impossible to say. By all indications, the 49-year-old hunter was in superb physical condition.
"There was no health history (of problems),'' Hanley said. "He was a pretty active man.''
That leaves the possibility of an accident, a freak medical problem such as an aneurysm, or foul play.
"At this stage of the game, I don't think you can eliminate anything completely,'' Hechtel said.
The idea of foul play might, at first, seem farfetched, Hechtel admitted, but Schleyer wasn't camped all that far from the Klondike Highway, and there is no telling who might have landed a small, single-engine floatplane on the lake where he was camped.
Still, Hechtel and John Murnane, a government wildlife veterinarian in Montana and a friend of Schleyer's, consider foul play highly unlikely.
"(Bart) is like the nicest guy in the world,'' Murnane said. "Bart had worked all over the world and uniformly was able to make friends. Foul play doesn't seem to be at the top of the list.''
But, he and Hechtel agree, it can't be ruled out, either.
"Nobody knows,'' Murnane said. "Nobody was there. All of those (possibilities) need to be explored ... and sorted out. I hope, and assume, everyone has done their job well.''
UGLY POSSIBILITIES
Brigittee Parker, a spokeswoman for the Mounties in Whitehorse, said the case remains open, but the organization leans toward the idea Schleyer was attacked and killed by a bear.
"There's no foul play suspected,'' she said. "Everything at the scene suggested a bear attack and did not suggest ... foul play.''
Absent the possibility of foul play, there are only two possible scenarios that remain to explain Schleyer's death:
• He was hunted, killed and eaten by a predatory grizzly bear.
• He died from an unknown illness or accident. A bear found his body afterward and fed on it.
Hechtel considers the first possibility the least likely. Predatory grizzly bear attacks are rare, and Schleyer was a superb woodsman.
"A bear attack,'' Hechtel said, "tends to be a bloody affair. The absence of blood. That's sort of weird."
There's more.
Hanley said the Vancouver pathologist who examined Schleyer's remains found no tooth punctures in his skull nor indications of scratch marks from teeth. When bears attack people, they almost always go for the head.
"None of it, really, smacks to me of a bear attack,'' Hechtel said.
BEAR FACTS
More likely, he contends, is scavenging by a bear, which would come after someone had died and their heart stopped beating. There would be much less blood in that case, he noted.
Murnane is slightly more open to the idea of Schleyer being attacked and killed, though he, too, is skeptical.
Still, he noted Schleyer himself had documented grizzly bears hunting elk during the rut near Yellowstone National Park. Could it be there are also grizzlies that hunt moose during the breeding seasons? He wonders.
"You're out in the woods, scentless, soliciting a predatory response'' by grunting on a moose call, he said. "An attack is a plausible scenario.''
Tom Smith, a scientist with the U.S. Biological Survey now at work on a paper on the subject of bear attacks in Alaska, agrees.
Grizzlies that range large territories with limited food supplies, such as the Yukon, are significantly more likely to attack people than coastal brown bears, which become somewhat socialized by regular encounters with other bears, he said.
Likewise, he added, hunters who move quietly about the woods trying to minimize their human scent are the people most likely to be attacked.
And Schleyer was hunting in habitat where bears are most likely to attack.
"It wouldn't surprise me,'' Smith said, if Schleyer was attacked, killed and eaten by a grizzly.
A LEGITIMATE MYSTERY
Smith dismisses the idea that Schleyer's skills as a woodsman would provide any protection against being stalked.
"A bear couldn't have snuck up on him?'' Smith asked. "Give me a break. They're quiet. Nobody's above it.''
Smith recounted the experience of another knowledgeable hunter and bear researcher studying brown bears along the Katmai Coast several years ago. While the man was watching the bears in front of him, another eased up unnoticed to within feet behind.
The scientist, Smith said, nearly had a heart attack when he got up to move, turned around, and discovered a bear almost within arm's length.
A bear responding to a moose call, thinking it was stalking a moose, might be even quieter. It's not hard to image such a bear killing a hunter, Smith said.
But, he agrees with others, that no one will ever know if that is what happened.
There just isn't enough information.
"It's a tragic story,'' Murnane said.
"At this stage of the game,'' Hechtel said, "I don't think you can eliminate anything completely.''
That makes the cause of Schleyer's death a legitimate mystery.
"It is and always will remain,'' barring new evidence, Hanley added.
Daily News Outdoor editor Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com.
