However, for people living in mountain communities surrounding bear strongholds such as Yellowstone National Park and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, bears in backyards, on the streets, or even breaking into sheds and garages heighten vigilance, or at least warrant it.

Residents of the Gardiner area, near the north entrance to Yellowstone, were reminded of this in recent weeks when a 15-year-old male grizzly raided garbage cans, businesses and even homes in search of food.

On Thursday, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks officials finally found the bear in the Yellowstone River north of Gardiner after failed attempts to capture it. The bear was shot, and residents breathed a sigh of relief that the nighttime raids might be coming to an end.

“The bear died because we, the public, trained him that way,” said Chester Evitt, a 59-year-old Navy veteran who lives on the banks of the Yellowstone River. “You could have talked to my wife instead of me if this story had taken a different turn.”

Evitt stayed up late watching the Jennifer Lopez film “The Mother” on Tuesday, July 16. Lopez plays a hitman who protects her daughter, whom she abandoned at birth in hopes of keeping the girl safe from dangerous former colleagues. When the girl is kidnapped, Lopez goes into full-on mama bear mode.

“I’m a killer, but I’m also a mother,” Lopez said in the film. “I’m going to die protecting her.”

Evitt had his feet up in his armchair watching the movie when, at about 11:27 p.m., his front door slammed open with a loud bang. The Gardiner grizzly had come to the door.

“The bear decided he wanted to come in,” Evitt recalled. “The foot of my recliner to the door is 5 feet,” so the big bear was right there.

In nearby Yellowstone National Park, adult male grizzlies can weigh up to 700 pounds, with a shoulder height of 3.5 feet. When standing on their hind legs, the animals can reach a height of 8 feet. Grizzlies can live 15 to 30 years if they avoid humans, their primary cause of death.

In most cases, bears avoid humans. Tracking collars have shown that some bears live incredibly close to people without anyone realizing it, and human-bear encounters often occur in situations where a mother is protecting her cubs.

This may have happened on July 18 near Glacier National Park — another grizzly stronghold — when a Columbia Falls man picking blueberries encountered a bear. The female charged. The man fired his gun. The bear died, but not before wounding the 72-year-old.

Based on initial examinations, the Gardiner grizzly had no physical limitations that would have caused it to seek out human food sources, such as poor health or worn, painful teeth. It appears that it became a local pest, with its devastating attacks, simply because some people failed to secure their trash, coolers, or grills. The old adage, “A fed bear is a dead bear,” often turns out to be true.

Evitt’s wife, Mary Dee, is a connoisseur. Smells wafting from the house after she prepared a Mexican meal of sautéed onions, peppers and refried beans may have attracted the grizzly bear to the house. A black bear’s sense of smell is said to be seven times stronger than a bloodhound’s.

“My house smells like a restaurant,” Evitt said.

After the bear broke down the front door, Evitt initially thought it was a “meth head on fentanyl” coming in. Then he saw the grizzly and yelled, “Bear! House!”

Next to his recliner, Evitt keeps a loaded Model 1911 Colt .45 semi-automatic pistol loaded with 220-grain hollow point bullets. As the owner of Mama Bear’s Armory, the gun shop in Gardiner, Evitt knows the bullets aren’t meant to stop a big bear.

He quickly grabbed the gun and shot the bear in the head several times.

“I fired my weapon out of pure fear and self-defense,” Evitt said.

The grizzly was so close that he could clearly see its claws and teeth and smell its breath.

“I can’t say how many shots I’ve fired,” he added. “We’re still finding copper.”

Brass refers to the brass casing that is ejected after a shot is fired. Colt 1911s hold seven rounds. Evitt said he wasn’t sure if it was fully loaded, but he later discovered he had two rounds left, one in the chamber ready to fire and one in the magazine.

Evitt said he deliberately tried not to hit the bear because he feared that if he killed it, he would face jail time or a hefty fine. Grizzly bears are protected as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. People — often hunters — who kill grizzly bears in self-defense are not charged after an investigation to determine the situation.

The door slamming open, followed by the gunfire, alerted Evitt’s wife and dogs. She emerged from the bedroom with a shotgun ready to shoot the bear, but she did not fire, he said. Although the bear backed away at the loud sound of the gunfire, it stopped about 10 yards outside the door and looked back at Evitt before running away.

“That bear wasn’t afraid of me until I shot it,” Evitt said.

Immediately after shooting the bear, Evitt called 911 to report the incident, but his rental home in the narrow valley doesn’t have good cell coverage. His phone kept cutting out, and he had to call again.

While Evitt was calling for backup, the bear went on to raid four other homes in the Maiden Basin neighborhood, about 4 miles north of Gardiner, Evitt said. While a Park County sheriff’s deputy was questioning Evitt, he began receiving calls from other homeowners about the bear.

“Everyone involved, from the state to the federal government, the 911 operator, they were all as professional as possible,” Evitt praised.

Evitt said it took him about three hours to stop shaking, his adrenaline pumping through his body. He texted an officer seven times. After the police left, he propped a chair against the door to keep it closed and stood guard until sunrise with his hunting rifle loaded with deer pellets, large chunks of lead ammunition better suited to killing a bear.

“I’ve never been this close to a grizzly bear before, and I never want to be this close to one again,” he said.

At 6 a.m., he opened the door and scanned the driveway for the bear to make sure his wife could get to her car and leave for work. Around 6:30 a.m., the bear returned.

It wasn’t until Thursday, July 18, that a Fish, Wildlife & Parks ranger and a bear management specialist were finally able to locate the bear in the nearby Yellowstone River and shoot it, the agency said in a news release.

The impact of the encounter was still vivid and impressive for Evitt three days later. On his way home from the hospital for a check-up after learning that doctors would have to amputate his left thumb, Evitt had to pull off the highway at a rest stop when a “severe panic attack” took hold of his body.

“It all adds up,” he said. “I haven’t been able to come down and relax.”

If you live in a small town, everyone has heard the news, or a twist of it.

“You could make a movie out of the stories that were going around about that poor bear,” Evitt said.

“I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘I heard you killed the bear,'” he added. “Absolutely not.”

Oddly enough, the Evitts had just returned from a vacation in Alaska, where they had been excited to see brown bears—the larger version of a grizzly—eating salmon at a fish ladder. One of their first stops after returning to Gardiner was a nearby coffee shop that the bear had damaged in a raid. The couple’s suitcases were still sitting by the door on that unsettled Tuesday night when the bear broke in.

Despite his encounter with the massive creature, Evitt said it was a beautiful bear. His wife had seen him while driving to work, standing on his hind legs in a field for a better view. In the four years the couple has lived in the area, Evitt said they have always been cautious and taken the necessary precautions to avoid feeding a bear.

In addition to storing trash and coolers, state bear managers advocate picking fruit trees, securing barbecues, and removing bird feeders. Traditionally, such tactics are emphasized in the fall and spring. In the fall, bears enter a phase called hyperphagia, where they eat constantly to gain weight for the scarce winter period. In the spring, bears that have just emerged from hibernation and are hungry may be less careful about securing a meal.

As human presence—through recreation and housing—infringes more and more on bear habitat, other precautions have become necessary. Chicken coops, hobby farms, and stored grain for horses are common problems. Occasionally, a grizzly bear will kill livestock. Electric fencing and the removal of dead animals have helped keep bears at bay, but not every neighbor is as careful as another.

“Please emphasize that the bear died because of the stupidity of so many people here who don’t dispose of their waste properly,” Evitt said.