Montana couple shoot bear in their living room

Seeley Oblander and her fiancé woke up to their dog Mazzy going nuts Thursday morning. 

“We brushed it off,” she said. They live in the country and figured the dog was just harassing a raccoon or a skunk.

But the dog wouldn’t quit. This was different.

It was about 3 a.m. when Seeley’s partner Tom Bolkcom finally walked downstairs to see what was going on.

“Tom looked behind him and five feet away in the living room was a black bear. They stood face to face for about five seconds,” Seeley said. The bear had broken in through a window of the home about 15 miles from Red Lodge.

The bear started making noises like he owned the place and wasn’t leaving. And, because the bear was between Tom and the door, there was no way to show him out.

Tom ran for his gun and shot the bear, who then ran from room to room with Tom after him.

“Tom shot him three or four more times until it was done,” Seeley said, whose role in the episode was “to hide downstairs and let Tom handle it.”

The couple had been up with family until about midnight that morning. They were preparing to travel to Arizona where Seeley had a bachelorette party planned with friends.

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With a dead bear in their sun room and a trail of blood around the house, the couple called a game warden to come and sort it out.

“We wanted it out of our house, the bear smelled awful, and he really made a mess,” Seeley said.

The warden said shooting the bear was probably the best thing to do. Once they get in your house they usually come back and want to get in again, she said.

The couple still had to leave at 6 a.m. to make their flight in Billings, so they called family to come and get the bear out of the house and tidy up. They rolled it onto a tarp and tugged it out into the yard. They figured it weighed from 250 to 300 pounds. 

And, they don’t get to keep the bear, to maybe make into a rug as a warning to other bears.

“It was a hectic morning, I can tell you that,” Seeley said.

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