There he was again, standing 200 yards away in a salmon river, just as majestic and menacing as ever.

Barry Barton and his guide, Billy Molls, had seen the large brown bear wandering the Aleutian Peninsula in Alaska for three days. In fact, the bear nearly attacked them when they got too close two days earlier.

Barton, a 58-year-old Butler native on his yearly hunting excursion to The Great White North, shot the bear once through the lungs and put four more shots into him before he finally stopped moving.

Molls, who produces a DVD series called “Modern Day Mountain Man,” circled around the corpse, amazed at its size.

“Oh my God,” Molls said.

“You know it’s big when your guide says that,” Barton says, laughing.

Molls estimated the bear weighed 1,400 pounds and was between 20- and 22-years old. Once skinned, his hide stretched out to almost 11 feet — even without a tail.

“Somewhere ... he lost his tail,” Barton said. “He lived a brutal life.”

Scars covered his body, telling the story of a violent life spent hunting and fighting.

This bear dominated the area where he lived. Barton observed other bears flee at the first whiff of his scent.

“He could take down an 8-foot bear and eat him,” Barton said.

Barton has spent 38 years working as a vice president for Penn United Technology in Cabot.

“It’s the pinnacle of every North American hunter to get a large brown bear,” Barton said.

It was even more special for Barton, who has bagged many animals in his time.

Barton has had both of his knees replaced, one in 2008 and the other in 2009.

He was told that hunting anywhere, let alone in rugged Alaska, was probably out of the question.

“I said, ‘No, no no,’ Barton explained. “‘I’m hunting.’”

Barton spent hours running on a treadmill to strengthen his legs and knees after the two surgeries. He started watching hunting shows and got into contact with Molls.

The bear’s skull is now being measured and weighed. The skull is the only thing taken into account when rating the size of the bear.

Molls estimated that the skull size would make it one of the largest ever harvested in that part of Alaska.

The bear will make a stop at a Safari Club International Convention in Reno, Nev., before making his way to Butler as the centerpiece of Barton’s trophy display.

“Half the country is going to see him before I do,” Barton said.

Bears of that size live to around 25, Barton said. The hunt and the kill couldn’t have gone better.

“He was the perfect bear to take,” Barton said. “He was getting toward the end of his life. He was spectacularly beautiful. He was enjoying his last dominion over that valley.”