The 180-kilo bear pulled the woman out of the tent in the middle of the night and caused her fatal injuries, according to NBC Montana.
The woman, in her 60s, spent the night with two friends, on what is a popular hiking trail through the Rocky Mountains in western Montana in the northwestern United States.
They pitched a tent just outside a small town called Ovando, with 75 inhabitants. The bear snuck into the group at 3 o’clock at night, but ran away when it woke the group.
The group responded by taking the food out of the tents and hiding it, in case the bear smelled it.
At 03:30, however, the bear was back, and the woman pulled out of the tent. The other two cyclists got out of the tents and sprayed the bear with bear spray. The bear ran away, but the woman’s life could not be saved, local media say.
The bear subsequently tracked it down and killed it, as it had just before, at 03:15, was caught on camera in connection with breaking into a chicken coop and eating several chickens.
In April, a few miles further south, a man was killed by a grizzly bear while fishing – probably the bear was aggressive since it had hidden away a moose carcass nearby, writes AP.
Reports shows that grizzly bears are on the rise – they have now taken over 6 percent of their former habitat in North America – up from 2 percent in 1975. Before they were almost extinct in the early 1900s, it is estimated that the western United States had 50,000 grizzly bears.
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