Ferndale man found guilty of killing grizzlies

A U.S. magistrate in Missoula on March 30 found a Ferndale man guilty of illegally killing three grizzly bears last year.

Dan Calvert Wallen was found guilty of three counts of unlawfully taking a threatened species. The maximum penalty for one count of taking an unlawful species is six months in jail and a $25,000 fine.

After being denied a request for a trial by jury, Wallen went to trial March 10. He will be sentenced May 12 in Missoula.

According to court documents, Wallen shot three grizzly bears at his home in Ferndale with a .22 rifle on May 27, 2014. One dead bear was found that day, and the others were found near Wallen’s home on May 28 and June 4.

Wallen testified in court that he felt threatened by all three bears and remembered physically shaking after the bears were gone. When interviewed during the investigation, Wallen signed an affidavit stating that he was fearful for himself and his family.

Discrepancies in his accounts of the incident, however, caused U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremiah Lynch to find lack of credibility in Wallen’s statements, court records say.

On the evening of May 27, Wallen was in his yard with family and friends when three grizzlies entered the yard and headed toward a chicken coop where they had killed several chickens the night before.

Wallen chased the bears off in his truck and returned to the house. The bears returned about 15 minutes later and again went for the chickens. Wallen used his truck to corral the bears at 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. Wallen retrieved a .22 rifle from the house and began cleaning up chicken carcasses from the yard.

Wallen gave three conflicting accounts about the events that followed. On May 27, he told Fish, Wildlife and Parks game warden Chuck Bartos that a 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 was surprised, Wallen told Bartos, when a 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 FWP personnel were examining the scene and discovered another dead grizzly bear, that Wallen volunteered additional information. He said that shortly before the grizzly appeared in his yard, two other grizzlies had broken into the chicken coop. He then fired two shots at the bears, which ran off.

During the investigation, Wallen told U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 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. He said he felt as if they were running toward him when he fired the first shot, and about 20 seconds later he fired another shot.

Discrepancies in his testimony led Lynch 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.”