A 300-pound animal, apparently unhappy that an intruder was on his turf, came charging and did not stop until Koger raised his .50 caliber muzzleloading rifle and fired from point-blank range. A hunting companion who witnessed the attack from a distance also shot the bruin, which wheeled, ran a short distance and collapsed.

Conservation officers concluded that they fired in self-defense at a bear that had lost its natural fear of humans.

With black bear populations rising, run-ins have become almost commonplace - more than 15,000 in the past year in states east of the Mississippi River according to a survey of state wildlife agencies.

Canadian bear researcher Hank Hristienko, who conducted the survey in January, found that 18 Eastern U.S. states were seeing more encounters with bears.

Most encounters involve hungry bears raiding backyard bird feeders or toppling garbage bins, but sometimes they are harrowing.

In a 2006 attack, a 210-pound (95-kilogram) male bear killed a 6-year-old girl and mauled her 2-year-old brother as well as her mother who tried to fend off the animal. The attack occurred during a family outing in Tennessee's Cherokee National Forest.

Some bears have become brazen, dining beneath backyard fruit trees, raiding pet food bowls, even chasing campers. At a park near Prestonsburg, Kentucky, last year, a bear held tourists at bay inside a cabin until rangers arrived to chase it away. They have also become road hazards. Wildlife agencies reported more than 1,300 struck by automobiles in 2008.

The US bear population more than doubled between 1989 and 2006, rising from 165,000 to over 350,000, according to The International Association of Bear Research and Management, a bear conservation nonprofit that takes a periodic census of the animals.

Biologists with the same group found nearly 20,000 reported conflicts between bears and humans in 37 states in a 2006 survey of state wildlife agencies. -- AP