There is no defending 9 shots with the bow by 3 hunters in my mind. I have a vision of the bear in a tree with the guys just winging arrows into it. Info still sounds sketchy, did the hunter know the bears history? If he didn't or if he just knew of a big bear roaming around, I see no problem taking the bear legally on public hunting grounds. It kills me to try and defend him at all but thats the only argument I can make. If my neighbors were feeding a huge buck, and I didn't know they were feeding it, all i would know is there was a monster frequenting the area. I'm sure Im not the only one who would set up on public land within the vicinity in hopes it walked by. Now if i knew it was a buck that was tame and hand fed and petted, then no way in heck could i hunt it. Just my 2 cents, hopefully the guy was oblivious to how tame it really was