Again many thanks for all the responses and interesting information. SBS and Effendude's views amongst others accord with what I've always thought of as 'big bear calibres' from reading years and years' worth of Gun Digest annuals with articles on Winchester 71s rebuilt for 450 Alaskan and suchlike. But ... of course reading about something is very different from being there and walking the walk! I'm not too sorry we don't have anything like a polar bear of grizzly here, to be honest.
(When I was at Raton last year for the FCWC meeting, nearly everybody in the GB teams hoped to see a bear in NM. Not me - I hoped to see a rattlesnake and maybe an elk. Anyway we were all disappointed bar Stuart Anselm, the FTR team captain who took a trip up the Interstate to do some shopping in Trinidad CO. All of a sudden, everybody ahead of him braked / swerved. looked like an accident, but it was a bear that had wandered onto the road and was standing there looking lost for a minute or two until it leapt the barriers and headed back for the hills! I was taken with your pronghorns though.)
Outrider 27 and somebody else who mentioned trip-wires and flares are spot-on though. The organisers / team leader failed in their duty of care. Despite a score of 3 ex 3 on seriousness of risk, and a score of 2 ex 3 on the likelihood aspect, the trip wire used was a lash-up and unreliable, there were insufficient numbers of flares issued, and the team leader had failed to familiarise himself fully with the rented rifle. Even if the rifkle had worked straight off, the victim would have been at best seriously injured as the bear got into the camp undetected and grabbed the poor boy by the head before anybody woke up.
The reason I put the post up was my being piqued by the official Norwegian line that implies a high-power rifle of 308 or 30-06 calibre is sufficient as a last resort defence. Reading about polars made me think that while a .30-06 would certainly be better than throwing rocks, I'd rather have something that made bigger holes in an animal that size.
(When I was at Raton last year for the FCWC meeting, nearly everybody in the GB teams hoped to see a bear in NM. Not me - I hoped to see a rattlesnake and maybe an elk. Anyway we were all disappointed bar Stuart Anselm, the FTR team captain who took a trip up the Interstate to do some shopping in Trinidad CO. All of a sudden, everybody ahead of him braked / swerved. looked like an accident, but it was a bear that had wandered onto the road and was standing there looking lost for a minute or two until it leapt the barriers and headed back for the hills! I was taken with your pronghorns though.)
Outrider 27 and somebody else who mentioned trip-wires and flares are spot-on though. The organisers / team leader failed in their duty of care. Despite a score of 3 ex 3 on seriousness of risk, and a score of 2 ex 3 on the likelihood aspect, the trip wire used was a lash-up and unreliable, there were insufficient numbers of flares issued, and the team leader had failed to familiarise himself fully with the rented rifle. Even if the rifkle had worked straight off, the victim would have been at best seriously injured as the bear got into the camp undetected and grabbed the poor boy by the head before anybody woke up.
The reason I put the post up was my being piqued by the official Norwegian line that implies a high-power rifle of 308 or 30-06 calibre is sufficient as a last resort defence. Reading about polars made me think that while a .30-06 would certainly be better than throwing rocks, I'd rather have something that made bigger holes in an animal that size.
