A 72-year-old man picking blueberries in Montana shot and killed a grizzly bear after it unexpectedly attacked him, seriously injuring him and sending him to the hospital, authorities said Friday.

The male was alone on national forest land when the adult female attacked him Thursday, critically wounding him before killing the bear with a handgun, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks officials said.

According to Dillon Tabish, spokesman for the agency, the bear likely reacted defensively to protect the cubs.

Wildlife workers are setting up trail cameras in the area to try to confirm the presence of cubs. If cubs are found, it is uncertain whether they will be captured because it is difficult to find qualified facilities to take them, he said.

“Depending on their age, we may leave them in the wild because they have a better chance of survival, rather than having to euthanize them,” Tabish said.

The attack occurred in the Flathead National Forest, about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) north of Columbia Falls, a northwestern Montana town of about 5,500, the state wildlife agency said.

The victim’s name and further details about his condition have not been released.

Meanwhile, Fish, Wildlife & Parks officials on Thursday shot and killed an adult female grizzly bear that had become accustomed to foraging for food and breaking into homes in and around Gardiner, a town of about 800 just north of Yellowstone National Park.

Animal feed, garbage and barbecues left outside and accessible to bears contributed to the problem, a department statement said. No people were injured by the bear before it was shot in the Yellowstone River.

Wildlife managers sometimes capture and relocate grizzly bears that are known to cause problems for people. But they also kill those that are involved in predatory attacks on people or that are likely to continue to cause problems regardless of whether they are relocated.

The grizzly from the Gardiner area was killed about 300 miles (500 kilometers) south of the unrelated attack in the Columbia Falls area. An estimated 2,000 grizzlies roam western Wyoming, eastern Idaho, western Montana, with thousands more in the Canadian Rockies and Alaska.

Grizzly bears in the contiguous U.S. are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Elected officials in the Rocky Mountain states are pushing federal officials to remove their protected status, which could open the door to future hunting.

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Gruver reported from Cheyenne, Wyoming.