MULDOON, Alaska, Sept. 24 (UPI) -- An Alaskan hiker with quick reflexes shot and killed a 750-pound brown bear as it charged him from the edge of a forest 20 feet away.
"I thought it was a moose, but then I saw it was too low for a moose. I just had time to pull my pistol and spin around," Gary Boyd of Muldoon, Alaska, told the Anchorage Daily News.
It turns out the bear was guarding a moose carcass left behind by hunters in the Chugach foothills.
"I fired the first shot, and I aimed at its shoulders. When the first shot didn't faze it, I fired the second time, and it turned into the ditch, and I shot three more times, and it went down," said Boyd.
Boyd was down to one remaining bullet in his .44-caliber Magnum when he called Anchorage police for assistance. State trooper Kim Babcock helped Boyd finish off the bear with her shotgun.
"We hadn't had that bear dead within three minutes when 12 cross-country runners from the high school came by," Babcock said.
