The victim was identified as Craig Clouatre, 40, of Livingston. No details were given about where he was found or why a grizzly bear was blamed for his death. Ground and helicopter search teams were searching for Cluatre after he went hiking Wednesday morning with a friend, possibly to hunt horns, and was reportedly late that day, according to the sheriff. The search began that night focusing on the Six Mile Creek area of the Absaroka Mountains, located about 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Livingston, Montana. “They broke up sometime later in the morning,” Park County Sheriff Brad Bichler told the Livingston Enterprise. “When the other man returned to their vehicle and his friend was not there, he called us and we started looking.” Authorities were working Friday to return Cluatr’s body to his family, Bichler said in a social media post. Clouatre’s father told the Associated Press that the victim grew up in Massachusetts and moved to Montana more than two decades ago, where Clouatre met his future wife, Jamie, and decided to build a house. “It was fine to have a son all the way,” said David Clouatre. “He was a good man, a good, hardworking family man.” The mountains in the area where Craig Clouatre died rise sharply above the Yellowstone River as it passes through Paradise Valley. Dense forests at higher altitudes are home to bears and other wildlife, although dangerous encounters with humans are relatively rare. Cloatre frequented these mountains and others around the park, hiking in the summer and ice climbing in the winter when he was not home with his wife and four young children, said Ann Tanner, a friend of the victim. “It just makes me angry that something like this could happen to such a good person,” Tanner said. “Of all the men I know, I can not believe he would die in the desert. “He was so strong and so smart.” Since 2010, grizzlies in the Yellowstone area have killed at least eight people. Among them was a driver killed by a bear last year along the western border of Yellowstone. Driver Charles “Carl” Mock was killed in April after being slaughtered by a 181-pound male grizzly while fishing alone at a favorite spot on the Madison River in Montana, where it spills out of the park. The Grizzlies are protected by federal law outside of Alaska. Elected officials in the Yellowstone area are pushing to lift protection measures and allow grizzly bears to be hunted. The Yellowstone area, which stretches across parts of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, has more than 700 bears. Deadly attacks on humans are rare, but have increased in recent decades as the grizzly population has grown and more people have moved to rural areas near bear habitats.
