Warden who survived griz attack recognized for service

Longtime Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks warden captain Louis Kis was recently given the outstanding service award by the North American Wildlife Enforcement Officers Association.

For almost 34 years, he served the people of Montana with distinction and with a reputation for being honest, tough, fair, straight-forward and always out in the field, his peers said.

“Lou was always there. If something looked like it was going to be rough or dangerous, Lou was right there with you,” Dale Graff, one of Kis’s long-time deputies said, Lou’s hands-on approach lead to him accidentally becoming one of the most famous game wardens in Montana’s history, left him with a strange scar, and gave him one heck of a story.

Born in August 1926 in Gold Creek, Kis learned the tricks of the game warden trade early on since his mother and closest neighbors had worked out a system of hanging dishtowels on the line to warn everyone the game warden was in the area. Kis started working on farms and in the forest while still in school in Big Arm and Polson was a Naval aviator in World War II. He worked shore patrol in Seattle after the War.

He returned to Polson and was working in the forest when he noticed an advertisement for deputy game wardens. He took the exam and was one of the five new wardens hired in 1954.

His boss in Missoula, Clyde Howard, gave him a black book of procedures, binoculars, waders and a badge and said, “Go gettum.” Because he was tough, they soon sent him to Butte.

Butte was a learning experience.

“I learned a lot while there as a district warden. Some of it was useful, some not so,” Kis reacelled.

Butte was rough. One night while drawing for bull elk permits, a crowd of people were surrounding Kis and shoving their IDs toward him.

He told the crowd to stand back and everyone would get a chance when someone to his side punched him in the jaw. Only the closeness of the crowd kept him upright and he turned and punched the man square in the face and knocked him out. Little did Kis know that the man was Butte’s boxing legend billed as the toughest man in Butte.

After that, Butte accepted Kis.

Kis was promoted to warden captain and transferred to Miles City in 1964, but he missed the mountains from where he grew up.

A year and a half later, Kis put in for and got the open captain’s position in Region 1 and moved to Kalispell in 1965. Soon Kis was in charge of every grizzly release.

In the 1960s Kis starting pushing to ensure that every warden had a proper firearm. Up to that point, wardens supplied their own. Kis testified at the legislature, worked with the department and eventually every Montana warden was issued a Smith & Wesson, Model 66 .357.

More than 20 years later, that same pistol saved his life.

On June 26, 1987, Kis and his wardens were scheduled to release a young grizzly that had already been trapped several times. However, the Department wanted to give this griz another chance since it had wandered down from Canada and was good for the local grizzly gene pool.

Kis and his team drove the bear way up into the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

They arrived at a spot Kis thought would be good for the bear, next to a stream near a meadow.

A second vehicle with a warden and a photographer, who was in Kalispell for the Outdoor Writer’s Convention, parked a safe distance away. The bear had been trapped on the Blackfoot reservation using an old style round aluminum cage that required a person to stand on top of the cage and manually lift the sliding gate.

As Kis climbed up onto the cage, he could tell the bear was no longer very sedated. He lifted the gate and it jammed. Seeing daylight, the bear pushed the gate up with his nose and bounded out of the cage. As the warden driving the truck started to drive, the bear lunged up and grabbed the cage. The opposing forces dislodged the cage and all three — the cage, the bear and Kis – tumbled down to the ground.

The bear bit Kis in the leg and started to push and thrash him about. Kis shot the grizzly’s wide, flat, head four times in the forehead to little effect, other than the bear released Kis’s leg and knocked Kis’s hand so the fifth shot went into the air. Kis grabbed the bear and stuck the gun in the bear’s neck and fired. That sixth and final shot instantly killed the 500-pound grizzly and it collapsed on Kis. He said all he remembered was how hot the bear was and the sound of the empty revolver clicking as he kept firing for several seconds after running out of shells. Kis pushed the bear off him, stood up on his leg with two shattered bones, picked up and dusted off his hat and said, “Well, s---.”

He walked over and sat on a log unaware that he had been bitten.

When he retired, friends engraved his Model 66 “Griz – 0, Lou – 1”. While that bear attack made the news and he became known for it, Kis was always sad that it happened. He had become a warden more than 30 years before to help preserve Montana’s wildlife and the wildness of its wilderness. That’s why, even as the warden captain of Montana’s most wild district, Kis was always out in the woods, patrolling, responding to calls, rescuing orphaned animals and putting in the work it takes to be an effective warden. As a kid and still to this day, there is nowhere else Kis would rather be than out in the woods, listening to a stream, smelling the trees and, even occasionally, inspecting a scat pile. And he still has a heck of a story to tell.

Kis, 92, lives at the Montana Veterans Home today.