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'Chaos and confusion' of Beattie Gulch bison hunt shown in federal reports

Isabel Hicks Chronicle Staff Writer 19 hrs ago

Documents obtained through a public records request paint a chaotic picture of the Beattie Gulch bison hunt last January, when a stray bullet grazed a Native hunter outside Yellowstone National Park.

The documents include the investigation reports from the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service officials who responded to the incident, eyewitness accounts, a map and a laboratory analysis of the ricocheted bullet.

The records were sent to the Chronicle by Montana nonprofit Yellowstone Voices and the Jared Pettinato Law Firm, who requested them last March.


For years, scores of Montanans have admonished Beattie Gulch bison hunting near Gardiner because of safety and ethical concerns. Wild bison are largely not tolerated in Montana, so the animals are killed when they leave Yellowstone.


Tribes have treaty rights to hunt migrating bison, which funnel through Beattie Gulch after crossing the park’s northern border. A handful of state hunters are awarded tags each year, too.

“It’s a remarkable set of documents. It really goes through the chaos that happens while this shooting is going on, and the dangers to the hunters themselves,” Pettinato said. “We can see these shooters are within at least a ricocheted bullet of each other. And we’re so grateful that nothing worse happened.”

The morning of Jan. 17, 2023, rangers were patrolling the northern boundary of Yellowstone, the National Park Service report stated. They observed two state hunters and around 10 tribal hunters from the Nez Perce and Umatilla tribes, plus their tribal game wardens.

Around 8:30 a.m., a concerned citizen alerted the rangers that a hunter had been struck by a bullet. The witness said the man didn’t seem injured and was processing his downed bison. He described hearing a small caliber shot followed by the sound of a bullet striking metal.

The hunter, later identified as Jackson Wak Wak of the Nez Perce Nation, said after he successfully shot and dropped a bison, he waited for other shots to end before walking forward with the rest of his hunting party to harvest it.

As he began walking forward, he heard more shots coming from behind and north of him, and said his back hurt instantly after hearing the shots. He then discovered he’d been hit with a bullet fragment.

There was no blood or damage to his clothing where the bullet impacted, the NPS report said. The ranger took a photo of the injury, a badly bruised circle about an inch thick on Wak Wak’s lower back. He told rangers he did not want medical care.


An eyewitness who was hunting with Wak Wak that morning said he saw a bullet impact the ground near the hunters and immediately yelled for people to stop shooting.

“There were six to eight more rounds fired at the bison from the north as word spread to stop firing. The complete cease fire took about a minute to achieve,” the witness statement said.

The Forest Service investigation also noted that people began to yell stop shooting, but approximately six more rounds were still fired after Wak Wak was struck.

That morning, as the bison herd entered the gulch, tribal hunters fired “30 or more” bullets, rangers reported. “I noticed that several bison appeared to have been hit/injured and were starting to make their way back to the park with the surviving members of the bison herd,” the NPS report stated.

Following the stray bullet striking Wak Wak, the ranger wrote that “I could hear someone yelling from the hunt area stating ‘the white man shot the Indian.’ I could not identify the subject from my location, but I could hear the phrase repeatedly yelled for the next several minutes.”

The suspected hunter was from Billings, according to previous reporting, and had a state tag. Pettinato said that’s “stastistically notable” given most Beattie Gulch bison hunters are tribal — there’s less than 100 state tags awarded each year.

The USFS report stated that “law enforcement was on scene trying to keep the two parties separated, as they were attempting to become physical. Primarily the party who believed they had been shot at was the most confrontational.” The suspected shooter was ultimately escorted by officials south through the park “in an effort to decrease chances of another confrontation with the upset tribal hunters.”


The report also said the tribal hunters yelled at officials, angry that the shooter could keep his harvested bison, calling him several names and accusing him of shooting at Wak Wak directly. At this point the Park County Sheriff’s Department deputies and Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials had also responded to the incident.

Officials confirmed the shooter had fired two shots that morning, one that missed and one that he saw drop a bison but did not see ricochet.

From the angle the suspect shot from, there were no indications that any other hunters were in the vicinity, the Forest Service report said. Computer tools created a map that showed a feasible scenario of how the bullet hit the bison and ricochetted to hit Wak Wak roughly a third of a mile away. It was determined no state crime had been committed, and the man did not discharge his weapon in a negligent manner.

One of the state hunters was a young boy between 10 and 12 years old, who had a black handgun stuffed into an open binocular chest harness, the NPS report said.

The USFS report said that bullets can sometimes deflect off bison, especially the head.

The official noted a perfectly symmetrical circle hole in the bison skull and determined the bullet had passed through the skull into the bison’s front shoulder. The head was sent to the Montana FWP wildlife lab in Bozeman for further analysis.

The lab report did not find any large bullet fragments in the head, but did find several small fragments of copper and lead.

The suspect found the rest of the bullet in the front shoulder when processing the bison. The retrieved bullet weighed 90.8 grains — approximately half of the original 180 grains.


Pettinato said ultimately, the documents show the safety measures the USFS has implemented for Beattie Gulch hunting are inadequate.

Last year, the Forest Service and tribes responded to calls to close Beattie Gulch to hunting, saying tribal game wardens ensure daily safety and Native methods for bison hunting today are misunderstood.

Pettinato said lengthy discussions with the tribes — who reiterated that closing Beattie Gulch to hunting is not their preferred move — have shifted his work. Now Yellowstone Voices is advocating for more bison on the landscape on public lands across Montana, so that tribal hunts can be spread out and allow for more of a fair chase. So far, Montana politics and the threat of disease transmission to livestock have prevented this from happening.

“I think once you allow the bison to go further into other places, it releases the pressure on Beattie Gulch that results in some of these safety issues,” Pettinato said.

He also highlighted Yellowstone Voices’ comment on the park’s draft bison management plan, which pushes Yellowstone to include the Beattie Gulch hunt impacts in its environmental impact statement. The park said previously their EIS will not analyze factors outside its boundaries, which Pettinato said defies the logic of doing one.

Sounds like a real cluster.

I have witnessed tribal hunters shooting buffs over there indiscriminately
Complete clusterfuck
They have absolutely not regards for safety nor animal suffering…so much for all the touting of “ native “ skills
If anyone gives hunters bad name in numbers, that would be Indians but of course they are off limits even for Feds or greenies…pitiful

quote:

Originally posted by M.Shy:
I have witnessed tribal hunters shooting buffs over there indiscriminately
Complete clusterfuck
They have absolutely not regards for safety nor animal suffering…so much for all the touting of “ native “ skills
If anyone gives hunters bad name in numbers, that would be Indians but of course they are off limits even for Feds or greenies…pitiful

Agree 100%. I have been down there a lot and have seen the same thing!

Sounds like they should make this an archery hunt for safety.

Indians and archery?
Don’t let me laugh