A Haines man facing charges for recently shooting three brown bears near his Beach Road home complained that police didn’t shoot another bear that got into the hold of his fishing boat at the Small Boat Harbor last week.

In an interview this week, Kristopher Morden, 49, said he felt “terrible” about shooting a sow and two cubs that got into his truck and a garbage container at his property three weeks ago. He acknowledged he could have done some things differently – like fire a warning shot – but feels the three misdemeanor charges he faces are excessive.

“Yeah, I did some things wrong. I made a split second decision and I took care of my problem, and now I have another problem,” Morden said.

Morden said he was confused and frustrated by the charges, because he reported the shootings to police instead of trying to cover them up.

“People shoot bears in Haines all the time, but they just don’t call the cops,” Morden said.

Troopers say Morden’s actions didn’t qualify under allowances for killing bears “in defense of life or property.”

According to Haines Borough Police Chief Robert Griffiths, who initially investigated the shootings, Morden came outside his house and shot a cub that had gotten into garbage he stored in a fish tote.

“And then mom was up on the hill above and made some noises at him, so he shot her. And then he went to bed. Then the dogs started barking later in the morning – must have been 8:30 a.m., 8-something in the morning – and he came out and the other cub was sitting on his back walkway…So he shot that one,” Griffiths said.

Morden called about an hour-and-a-half later to report the shootings, Griffiths said.

In this week’s interview, Morden said the bears got into his Toyota truck while it was parked in the driveway the night before the shootings. He left groceries in the truck with the windows down, and believes the cubs crawled in to get them. In the process, they tore up the seats and caused several thousand dollars’ worth of damage, Morden said.

A commercial fisherman, Morden was getting ready to leave his home for the season. Morden said he felt he was defending his property, as the bears were getting into his garbage and one cub had made it onto the deck.

“I just didn’t feel like I could leave my house and go fishing for a month,” he said. “The police aren’t going to stay there and protect my property every day. If I had just scared the bears away, they would have come back.”

“I have to protect my stuff. Nobody is going to do that for me,” he said.

Two weeks after the shootings, at about 11 p.m. on July 2, a brown bear was spotted at the harbor “hopping from boat to boat.” Officers responded and shot the bear with rubber bullets to scare it off.

“They really couldn’t find a good place to try and dispatch the bear (with real bullets) without quite likely putting holes in peoples’ boats,” Griffiths said.

Several hours later, the bear returned. Dispatch received another 911 call, and responding officers found the bear happily gorging on fish bait in a hold on Morden’s boat. “It was down there munching out, doing what bears do,” Griffiths said.

The bear, which officers estimated to be between 100-150 pounds, abandoned ship after it was again shot with rubber bullets.

After learning of the damage to his boat, Morden called police that same early morning – around 4 a.m. – to complain about their decision not to kill the bear. Morden demanded to speak to an officer and was told there was no officer on duty at that time.

“That’s when he changed his story and said, ‘No, there’s a bear in my yard.’ (He was) basically saying I’m afraid for my life and you need to come and save me from the bear,” Griffiths said.

Dispatch called out an officer from stand-by, but when the officer arrived, he couldn’t find a bear. “(Morden) basically informed the officer that he would continue to contact the police department until such time as he got satisfaction, and that is when the officer said, ‘No, you don’t want to do that, because then you are making false reports and you’re tying up resources and if you do that, we’ll have to take more drastic action.’”

Morden said he didn’t change his story and was legitimately concerned about bears in the area, as he had discovered a fresh pile of bear scat in his driveway. He said he was upset that the officers hadn’t killed the bear, as it would continue to come back to the harbor and could run into a person on one of the narrow floats.

Morden said that on July 2 he had moved the fish, which he was using to bait crab pots, off the deck to keep it away from birds. He washed down the deck afterward.

Morden faces three misdemeanors for taking a brown bear out of season. State trooper Sgt. Aaron Frenzel said Morden’s killing of the bears didn’t qualify as a “defense of life or property” shooting because the bears weren’t acting aggressively and they were attracted to the property by Morden’s improperly secured garbage.

Morden’s arraignment is scheduled for Aug. 6. He intends to plead not guilty.

“I kind of take it like it is a test. A weaker man it might drive over the edge, but I’m just going to have to deal with it,” Morden said