Andrew Renner and his son Owen cut a path on backcountry skis, toting rifles and seemingly confident it was just them and the black bears.
The hunters stopped at a den on a remote Alaska island and peered in to find their slumbering target. Owen Renner shouldered the rifle and fired at least two shots into a mother bear. Then the "shrieking" started, prosecutors said. The hunters listened for a few minutes and determined the origin of the cries: two cubs.
The April 14 incident may have been just another case of mistakenly killing a female bear, or sow, with cubs, which is illegal in Alaska but rarely results in jail time.