I used to live in Kodiak, AK and had quite a few encounters with Brown Bears. The most memorable was on a hunting trip with a buddy from work and we were on our way back from a successful deer hunt. We came to a river crossing and he slammed on his brakes, I very nearly missed his quad and almost ran into a deep pool in the river. After a near miss and looking back at my buddy, I noticed he was scrambling to get his quad in reverse and turn around, I then turned to see two Brown Bruins staring me down at 40 yards. I thought it was awesome as they were just fishing and did not seem to care we were there. After we calmed down, we turned off our quads to just watch and take pictures. I started to get my camera out of my pack, then I realized we had a little less than two hundred pounds of deer meat on our quads.The bears seemed not to notice the smell of the meat as there were fish half eaten all over the bank of the river. After we had been there for about 5 min they started pacing towards us, my buddy Brian was white as a ghost and scrambling to get his quad turned around again. I decided that taking their picture was not a wise choice and started my quad to get across the river and away from the brown monsters pacing towards me. As I was crossing the river, I did not choose that best path, and the water was already up to my knees. It got so deep that my quad actually started floating, thank God I had such monster mud tires on that quad, I actually floated down stream and across to the other side of the river, I was able to crawl up the bank and get back on the trail. By this point the bears had stopped their pursuit and began fishing again. After we got back on the trail, we statred laughing about how close we came to being mauled by Brown Bears, and the fact that we smelled like blood and guts! Whew, what a rush! Those Bears are much larger in person than on TV. The two bears were young males, probably about three to four years old, they were not yet full grown adults and still they had to be near 9 ft tall each! I had encounters with Black Bear On the mainland in AK and didn't even flinch, they seem like dogs to me now after encountering The Big Brownies! That was probably the only time I'm glad was on a quad and not my Bike!