Bigfork man found guilty in deaths of three grizzly bears

A Bigfork man has been found guilty of illegally killing three grizzly bears.

On Monday, a U.S. magistrate in Missoula found Dan Calvert Wallen guilty on three counts of unlawfully taking a threatened species.

Wallen shot three grizzly bears at his home in Ferndale last May. After being denied a request for a trial by jury, Wallen went to trial March 10 at the U.S. District Court in Missoula.

He will be sentenced May 12 in Missoula.

Court documents say Wallen shot three grizzly bears with a .22 rifle on May 27, 2014, but only one dead bear was found that day. The two other bears were found on May 28 and June 4 near Wallen’s home.

When deciding to convict Wallen the government needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Wallen knowingly shot a bear, that the bear was a grizzly, he did not have a permit to do so, and he was not acting in self-defense or the defense of others.

Court documents state the first three points were not in dispute at the trial, and they were already proven beyond a reasonable doubt. 

On the night of the shooting, Wallen’s family and friends were in the Wallets’ yard when three grizzly bears appeared and went toward a chicken coop.

In his testimony Wallen described feeling threatened by all three bears due to their proximity and remembered physically shaking after the bears were gone, court documents say. At an earlier interview during the investigation Wallen signed an affidavit stating that he was fearful for himself and his family. However, discrepancies in his accounts of the incident caused the court to find lack of credibility in Wallen’s statements, court records say.

Court documents say that in the evening on May 27 Wallen was in the yard with family and friends when three grizzlies entered the yard and went for the chicken coop, where they had killed several chickens the night before.

Wallen chased the bears off in his truck and returned to the house. About 15 minutes later the bears came back and went for the chickens. Wallen used his truck to corral the bears to the edge of his neighbor’s property, and returned to the house.

He could still see the bears in a field a long distance away, court documents say. Wallen retrieved a .22 rifle from the house and began cleaning up chicken carcasses strewn about the yard.

Wallen gave three conflicting accounts about the events that followed, court documents say. Fish, Wildlife and Parks game warden Charles Bartos arrived in Ferndale the night of May 27 after receiving a call that a grizzly bear had been shot and killed. He spoke with Wallen at the scene, where Wallen told him that the dead bear had come into the yard while he was picking up the chicken carcasses, and he shot at it twice to scare it away. He didn’t think he had hit the bear, court documents say. He was surprised, documents state, when his neighbor called to say there was an injured bear in the driveway between their houses. Seeing the bear could only move its head, the neighbor shot and killed it.

It wasn’t until the next day, when officials were examining the scene and discovered another dead grizzly bear that Wallen volunteered additional information, documents say.

Wallen said shortly before the grizzly appeared in his yard, two other grizzlies had come in while he was picking up chicken carcasses, and broke into the chicken coop. He then fired two shots at the bears, which ran off, court documents say.

The third dead bear was found a week later.

Wallen had given conflicting accounts of his final encounter with the first two grizzly bears, court documents say. During the investigation Wallen told  U.S. Fish, Wildlife and Parks Special Agent Brian Lakes that he was 40 yards away from the two bears when they came running back into his yard from behind his garage. He said they were heading toward the chickens, so he fired several shots to scare them off.

In his trial testimony, Wallen said he was standing 15 feet away from the bears when they appeared from behind the garage and felt as if they were running toward him when he fired the first shot, about 20 seconds later he fired another, court documents say.

Court documents also found discrepancies about his encounter with the third bear. Wallen said he told the law enforcement agent when he shot at the bear, it was eating chickens and he had shot at it to scare it away. He said he fired a second shot as the bear was walking away. Those statements are consistent with results of the necropsy, which showed two bullet holes in the bear’s left hindquarter, court documents say.

Two days later, Wallen told special agent Lakes that he shot at the bear when it was between a tree and a post just west of the chicken coop, and that the bear, turned and ran away after the second shot. At trial, Wallen testified that the bear was running erratically in different directions when he fired the first shot, court documents say.

Those discrepancies in testimony led the court to conclude that, “Wallen’s trial testimony as it pertains to his claim that he acted in defense of himself or others is simply not credible.”

The maximum penalty for one count of taking an unlawful species is six months in jail and a $25,000 fine.