Visitors view aGrizzly Bear at the Bear and Wolf Recovery Center just outside of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. (Photo by Sandy Huffaker/Corbis via Getty Images) BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) - A Montana man who went missing while hiking earlier this week was killed in a suspected encounter with a grizzly bear north of Yellowstone National Park, authorities said Friday.The victim was identified as Craig Clouatre, 40, of Livingston.
No details were provided on where he was found or why a grizzly bear was believed responsible for his death.Search teams on the ground and in helicopters had been looking for Clouatre after he went hiking on Wednesday morning with a friend, possibly to hunt for antlers, and was reported overdue that day, according to the sheriff.
The search began that night concentrated on the Six Mile Creek area of the Absaroka Mountains, located about 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Livingston, Montana.RELATED: Woman injured by bison at Yellowstone National Park on second day after reopening"They split up at some point later in the morning," Park County Sheriff Brad Bichler told the Livingston Enterprise. "When the other man returned to their vehicle and his friend wasn’t there, he called us and we began searching."Authorities were working Friday to return Clouatre’s body to his family, Bichler said in a social media post.Clouatre’s father told The Associated Press that the victim grew up in Massachusetts and moved more than two decades ago to Montana, where Clouatre met his future wife, Jamie, and decided to make a home."He was a joy to have as a son all the way around," David Clouatre said. "He was a good man, a good, hardworking family man."An elderly woman trying to take a photo of a bison at Yellowstone.