I read his story in Reader's Digest a few months back. The guy was a kook.
I stumbled across something on tv about this guy last week. He was camped in thick brush and grass at the time the bear attacked. The killer bear was about 20 years old, and probably went hunting for the easiest prey he could catch at his age. Among the items found at the campsite was a video camera. The camera was running during the attack, but the lens cap had not been removed (supposedly), so only the audio of the attack was preserved. Probably the biggest lesson from this guys life is that no matter how close you can get to wild animals, sooner or later one will turn on you, with deadly results. Most of the bears were probably used to him enough to leave him alone, even when he got too close, but one old, hungry bear that couldn't catch anything else still got him without warning.