Man admits shooting at other Bigfork hunters

A Columbia Falls man was given a one-year deferred jail sentence on Wednesday for shooting toward other duck hunters on opening day last year.

Brad Lee Bell, 44, also will have to pay $1,874 in restitution for damages to a cellphone and boat caused by his shots at two other hunters near Sportsman’s Bridge on Montana 82 on Oct. 3, 2015.

Bell testified that he had warned the two men against traveling through decoys he had set up on the river and that they had moved downriver. Bell eventually ended up shooting at the men.

Court documents claim that the men were struck by shot. Bell was ready to take the issue to trial and present an expert witness who claimed that Bell was too far away to actually harm the men, according to his attorney Thane Johnson.

“It was an extremely defensible case,” Johnson said.

However, Bell originally was charged with felony criminal endangerment and the risk of conviction was too great because a conviction would have serious implications for Bell’s employment, Johnson told Flathead District Judge Heidi Ulbricht.

A plea agreement reduced the charge to misdemeanor criminal mischief.

Bell entered an Alford plea, which convicts a defendant but allows a defendant to maintain his or her innocence. The plea acknowledges that a defendant is likely to be found guilty by a jury.