LINCOLN, Mont., April 4— The simple, back-to-nature life of the man the Federal authorities believe is the technology-hating Unabomber was plagued by rabbits and deer. They ate his carefully tended organic garden.
"He had a war going with those rabbits because they were eating his garden," said Dan Rundell, a local deputy sheriff who gave the suspect, Theodore J. Kaczynski, the battered bicycle that became his main transportation. "The rabbits were gaining."
Shaggy-bearded and eccentric, Mr. Kaczynski passed almost unnoticed in this rugged mountain town of loggers, ranchers and outdoors enthusiasts, many of whom get by on odd jobs like trapping and guiding snowmobile tours. In many ways, he was as little noticed as the tough-looking Federal Bureau of Investigation agents who have been stalking him for five weeks through juniper groves and snowy ravines.
"I can understand his wanting to be private," said Karen Potter, owner of the Blackfoot Market, where Mr. Kaczynski sometimes stopped for cans of Spam and tuna and packets of stone-ground flour. "He's not the only recluse we have who is strange. There are people stranger than him."
Dick Lundberg, who delivered Mr. Kaczynski's mail until retiring this year, was, like most other Lincoln residents, stunned by the news of Mr. Kaczynski's arrest.
"We find it awful hard to believe," Mr. Lundberg said, "but like everybody else, we didn't know him."
For all the fanfare over the arrest, however, Sheriff Chuck O'Reilly was announcing to all comers that he was "totally disgusted" that his department had been kept in the dark by the F.B.I., which he denounced as "the John Wayne" of law-enforcement agencies.
Sometimes, particularly in the winter, Mr. Lundberg would give Mr. Kaczynski a ride into town in the truck of the private mail service, Lincoln Stage, which contracts to take mail and packages along a 90-mile loop too remote for the United States Post Office.
Every fall, Mr. Kaczynski would drop off a bag of parsnips from his garden for Mr. Lundberg. Often when the two men talked, he complained of how the deer were nibbling at the crop he tended in the short growing season.
"He knew how to grow a garden," said Mr. Rundell, the sheriff's deputy. "It was neat, well-fenced. The season's so short here you can only grow root vegetables, carrots, potatoes, parsnips. There was a sort of chicken-wire fence, but the rabbits would get through and under it and eat his vegetables."
Mr. Kaczynski showed Mr. Rundell the garden a couple of years ago, when he stopped by the one-room cabin of boards and plywood. --
The cabin, off a remote dirt road, is spare, said George Youderian, a volunteer fireman who visited it once as a census worker. Mr. Youderian said that it had no electricity, but that there was a Coleman gas stove and a rough grill, for outdoor cooking, set on bricks and rocks. An ax for cutting wood was stuck in a chopping block.
Irene Preston, a spry 84-year-old woman who was one of Mr. Kaczynski's few social contacts, said there was also a hole, covered with boards, under the cabin.
"It was just boards that I remember," Ms. Preston said. "He said he had a basement to keep his potatoes."
The bicycle first used by Mr. Kaczynski had fallen apart and he was looking for parts to repair it when Mr. Rundell gave him a bike handed down from someone else. It was a battered, old-fashioned 26-inch model with a heavy frame, no gears and a big black seat. Mr. Kaczynski became a familiar sight around town, with his pants rolled up, a yellow flag on the bike, apparently to make him visible in traffic, and a bulky mountaineering backpack.
At times, Mr. Kaczynski would go out of town, some people recalled, although no one knew for sure how he traveled. He did not have a car, and was usually seen around town either on foot or his bicycle. But every day there is a bus west to Missoula and another east to Great Falls, departing from the curb in front of the Rainbow Cafe, on the town's only paved street.
Dick Jenest, a neighbor, said Mr. Kaczynski told him he would time the three-mile walk to town to arrive in time for the bus.
Mr. Kaczynski's routines were simple. He stopped frequently at the Lincoln Public Library, a small, moss-green wooden building next to the high school ball field. Beverly Coleman, a former library volunteer, recalled how the staff saved newspapers and magazines like Scientific American and Omni for Mr. Kaczynski and tried to get copies of books he requested. It was not unusual for some of them to be out of print, she said.
"He read classic literature in its original language," Ms. Coleman said. "If it was written in German, that's what he wanted it to come in. Everything was special ordered for him because he liked such off-the-wall stuff."
Once a week or so in the summer Mr. Kaczynski would stop into Garland's outdoor store, where Teresa Brown, a clerk, remembered him as "very polite, but always keeping to himself." Each time, Ms. Brown said, he would pick up the same sorts of things -- fishing gear, lures and batteries.
"I used to instigate conversations," said Mrs. Potter, at the grocery store. "Like the time I asked him where he'd been after not seeing him. I understood then that personal questions would not be welcomed."
Photos: Karen Potter, owner of the Blackfoot Market in Lincoln, knewTheodore Kacyznski from his shopping and said she understood his desire for privacy. The mailbox of Theodore J. Kaczynski, the Unabomber suspect, across the road from the entrance to his cabin outside Lincoln, Mont. Residents described a shaggy-bearded loner, not unusual for those parts, who discouraged personal questions and complained about animals in his garden. (Photographs by Jim Wilson/The New York Times) Map of Montana showing location of the suspect's cabin.
