Father and son illegally killed sleeping mother bear and her cubs. But a wildlife camera caught them in the act

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.

Andrew Renner looked through the scope and fired at point blank range, killing them alongside their mother.

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. Accused hunters typically say the killings were inadvertent.

But the crime was captured on a stop-motion camera used to document the bears’ activity, and the sow wore a GPS-enabled collar – helping prosecutors piece together the illegal killing and cover-up.