Photo courtesy of Wayne Lonn

Stopped in its tracks: Kent Crabtree inspects the large foot of a dead brown bear that minutes earlier had charged him and Wayne Lonn, who were doing field work last Sunday in Berners River for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.Fisheries biologist Kent Crabtree didn't set out to kill his first brown bear last weekend. And he wasn't thinking how big the animal was as it charged toward him.

"I was thinking how small I was," he said.

He was working last Sunday at the headwaters of the Berners River, about 14 miles upstream from Berners Bay. With his partner from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Wayne Lonn, yelling that the safety on his weapon was stuck, Crabtree fired two rounds from his .338-caliber rifle.

After the second shot, the bear lay dead in the river fewer than 10 feet from where they stood, Crabtree said.

Crabtree said both he and Lonn were impressed with its size