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Someone in Montana may be trying to make up for their own shortcomings by shooting endangered Grizzly bears and taking their claws.

On October 1, a 2-year-old male grizzly was found dead in the state's Lewis and Clark National Forest, killed by poachers who took its claws and other undisclosed body parts. Just 17 days later, a second grizzly, this one a female, was uncovered in the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, also with its claws removed.

"It's what we call vandal killing," says Chris Servheen, the grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS.) "The hunter lets the animal lie there after they've killed it, then they move in to take themselves a souvenir, whether it's to craft a fake Native American necklace or to feel all macho by showing off the a claw on a keychain."

While initial media reports speculated that the bears were killed by the same hunter or hunters, that assumption is disputed by Servheen, who has three decades on the job as a wildlife biologist. He notes that since the animals "were found in separate areas, it probably means their deaths were a coincidence."

Killing bears isn't usually news unless they're the victims of a Sarah Palin helicopter trip, but because grizzlies are listed as an endangered species, whacking one is punishable by tens of thousands of dollars in fines and up to a year in jail.

Brian Martin, director of science for the Montana Fish and Wildlife Bureau, also wonders if the bears were killed so their claws could be sold on the black market "for some sort of decorative purpose." He says that the Fish and Wildlife investigators might know the answer, but would be protecting that information until their investigation is complete.

However, amid all this swirling mystery is good news for the bears that activists like "Grizzly Man" Timothy Treadwell have tried so hard to protect: Soon, they will all go into hibernation for the winter and go on to roam another year.