A Ferndale man has been found guilty of illegally killing three grizzly bears last year.

On Monday, a U.S. magistrate in Missoula found Dan Calvert Wallen guilty of three counts of unlawfully taking a threatened species.

Wallen shot the grizzly bears at his home in Ferndale in May 2014. After being denied a request for a trial by jury, Wallen went to trial March 10.

He will be sentenced May 12 in Missoula.

Court documents say Wallen shot three grizzly bears with a .22 rifle on May 27, 2014, but only one dead bear was found that day. The other bears were found on May 28 and June 4 near Wallen’s home.

In his testimony, Wallen described feeling threatened by all three bears and remembered physically shaking after the bears were gone, court documents say. During an earlier interview during the investigation, Wallen signed an affidavit stating that he was fearful for himself and his family. 

However, discrepancies in his accounts of the incident caused the court to find lack of credibility in Wallen’s statements, court records say.

Court documents say that on the evening of May 27, Wallen was in his yard with family and friends when three grizzlies entered the yard and went for a chicken coop where they had killed several chickens the night before.

Wallen chased the bears off in his truck and returned to the house. About 15 minutes later the bears came back and went for the chickens again. Wallen used his truck to corral the bears at the edge of his neighbor’s property  and returned to the house.

He could still see the bears in a field a long distance away, court documents say. Wallen retrieved a .22 rifle from the house and began cleaning up chicken carcasses from the yard.

Wallen gave three conflicting accounts about the events that followed, court documents say. 

On May 27, Wallen told Fish, Wildlife and Parks game warden Chuck Bartos that the  bear had come into the yard while he was picking up the chicken carcasses, and he shot at it twice to scare it away. 

He was surprised, documents state, when his neighbor called to say there was an injured bear in the driveway between their houses. Seeing the bear could only move its head, the neighbor shot and killed it.

It wasn’t until the next day, when Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks was examining the scene and discovered another dead grizzly bear, that Wallen volunteered additional information, documents say.

Wallen said shortly before the grizzly appeared in his yard, two other grizzlies had broken into the chicken coop. He then fired two shots at the bears, which ran off, court documents say.

During the investigation, Wallen told U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Special Agent Brian Lakes that he was 40 yards away from the two bears when they came running back into his yard from behind his garage. He said they were heading toward the chickens, so he fired several shots to scare them off.

In his trial testimony, Wallen said he was standing 15 feet from the bears when they appeared from behind the garage. He said he felt as if they were running toward him when he fired the first shot and about 20 seconds later he fired another shot.

Discrepancies in testimony led the court to conclude: “Wallen’s trial testimony as it pertains to his claim that he acted in defense of himself or others is simply not credible.”

The maximum penalty for one count of taking an unlawful species is six months in jail and a $25,000 fine.