The first day of the highly anticipated trial of a U.S. woman extradited to face charges in the hunting death of her husband began Monday with riveting testimony from a guide who described the shooting.

Mary Beth Harshbarger, 45, of Meshoppen, Pa., maintains she mistakenly thought her husband was a bear when she shot him on Sept. 14, 2006.

Lambert Greene had been acting as a guide for Harshbarger and her husband Mark, who had brought their two small children and were hunting at a lodge near Buchans Junction in the centre of the province.

Greene described the evening of the shooting, when he and Mark Harshbarger were working their way out of the woods on foot. He said Mary Beth Harshbarger had been waiting at a pickup truck on a nearby woods road.

The guide said he had stopped for a moment and Mark Harshbarger continued on.

Greene said he heard a gun shot, followed by a loud "scream."

He called out to Harshbarger, asking if she had fired her rifle.

"She said 'yes.' I said 'What did you shoot at?' She said 'I shot at a bear, did I get him?' No, I said. 'You got Mark,' " Greene recalled.

She then asked if her husband was all right, Greene said.

"I said, 'No, he's dead,' " Greene told the court.

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