Ambushed

WHEN MATTHEW CHURCHMAN woke up on a recent Sunday morning, at first the only thing growling was his stomach. Coffee and a cold breakfast took care of that. Camp, nestled in a 300-yard-long, cottonwood-and-willow stretch of river bottom, was in the process of being broken down. Skies were overcast—perfect conditions for a morning of trout fishing and a leisurely row to the take-out. Wife Laura and daughter Ella were helping pack up. And the only sense of urgency he felt after strong black coffee was taking a leak. So he wandered off into the willows. That’s when he saw the bear before it saw him.

Grizzly bear numbers are on the rise in the northern Rockies. Jamie Jonkel is a bear specialist for Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks. He followed in his father Charles’s footsteps, and so has a lifetime of bear encounters and stories from which he can assess the current situation. “There are more bears here than we’ve had in quite a while,” Jonkel says. “The Montana depicted in A River Runs Through, where flyfishing is this day-dreamy, contemplative pastime, was the result of those guys’ fathers shooting out all the bears, and ruining a lot of their habitat. But it’s not like that anymore.”