What Stops a Large Bear close-up?

[Laurie]

Many thanks for the responses (including the less serious ones). A lot of our guys thought pump action 12-gauges too. Personally, I'm with Watercam and Cort in thinking I'd like a rifle with a lot of ME firing a bullet that makes a really big hole.

The more I read about this 'adventure holiday' and having now seen online an official Norwegian guidance document on precautions required to avoid / protect oneself from polar bears while camping / walking on the Svalbard archipeligo, the more I think I'd stay out of there unless paid a great deal of money. If I ever did go, I reckon I'd get precious little sleep in a tent knowing what I now know.

 

[Laurie]

Personally I have no faith at all in my ability to make any sort of precision hit with a handgun in a bear attack situation. And with the energies involved with handguns it would need to be a head or spine shot. [Watercam]

I read an article looking at the usefulness of a handgun in a bear attack many years back in an American gun mag, probably Wolfe's 'Rifle'. It reckoned that in a typical thick cover confrontation, a large bear that attacked would be on a person before he got the revolver out of a belt-holster. The historical precedents that the writer dug up weren't exactly positive either. Most handgun toting bear attack victims who survived only shot their bear while being hugged / mauled by the brutes and had to make their way back to civilisation with serious claw wounds.

And re the point about a head shot, the Norwegian guidance states re polar bears, that if it does eventually prove necessary to shoot a bear in self defence go for the torso and keep shooting. It advises against head shots as polars have very strong skulls and the head kill zone is surprisingly small. You learn something new and potentially useful every day on the Internet. If a polar turns up on Diggle Ranges, I'm ready for it and have to hope it's a day I've got my 284 Win F-Class rifle and not a 6mm BR!

(And to think we've got people in Europe backed by EC bureaucrats who want to reintroduce wolves and bears all over the place, saying that since they were once part of the habitat, the staus quo ante should be restored. Well, digs in clay pits in southern England turn up sabre tooth tiger remains, and I don't think the average Londoner would fancy a Jurassic Park type restoration of these and similar beasts just 'cause they once lived there!)

 

[M-61]

Howdah pistols worked for many Englishmen as a last ditch stopper.

 

[Laurie]

While we're not allowed breechloading revolvers or semi-auto pistols in the UK, muzzle loading types (and cap & ball type revolvers) are still legal for civilian recreational shooting. However, putting 'self defence against polar bears' down as the 'good reason' for owning a Howdah pistol would be unlikely to be see a Firearms Certificate being granted, or a 'variation' to acquire a new gun on same!

 

[dannyr3_8]

How do you tell Grizzly poop from Black bear? Black Bear poop has rabbit fur and berries, Grizzly poop has whistles and bells and smells like pepper spray..


Take a good size gun you know how to handle, Then bring your bag of nerve to get it done..


Ray
[/quote


;D

 

[Hopkins]

Back in the 70's a park ranger in Glacier National Park shot and killed a couple of nuisance grizzlies that charged him with a 94 Winchester in 30-30 . He had been mauled before so no one second guessed his actions. A number of Alaskan guides swear by the Winchester 71 converted to 450 Alaskan as their brown/Kodiak bear defense choice.

 

[Steve Blair]

(And to think we've got people in Europe backed by EC bureaucrats who want to reintroduce wolves and bears all over the place, saying that since they were once part of the habitat, the staus quo ante should be restored. Well, digs in clay pits in southern England turn up sabre tooth tiger remains, and I don't think the average Londoner would fancy a Jurassic Park type restoration of these and similar beasts just 'cause they once lived there!)

[br]
True. Here in California, there were once large numbers of a very aggressive, very large Brown Bear called the California Grizzly. There were so many that the state was once known as "The Bear State." The largest one was killed in Southern California in 1873 by John Lang. It weighed 2,320 pounds and remains the largest bear killed in recorded history. These bears were hunted to extinction because they were known to kill just about anything they saw and did not hibernate, making them year around feeders and threats. It is a shame that they are no longer with us but would almost certainly be incompatible with present day California. While some would like to see them reintroduced into the Bay Area or Sacramento, near the legislature, we're probably a little safer without them.

 

[Alex Wheeler]

We just had a Grizzly attack here. The guy was hunting black bear when a griz jumped him. He had enough time to pull the trigger on his 300 weatherby mag and got a head shot. The bear ran off to die, but not before almost killing the guy. He had to be air lifted to Wa. state. The game warden said it looked like you just peeled his face off. There is no gun that I would feel safe with against charging grizzly.

 

[people]

There is a story where a guy in Alaska used a sar2 to put down a charging bear.

 

[drover]

It appears to me that they key issue is that the guide was not familiar/trained in the use of the firearm. Nothing more, nothing less!

drover

 

[SBS]

Laurie, large cal. rifles such as .416 up to .458 diameter are the stuff needed for such fast and close range encounters with the large bears, where pinpoint accuracy is difficult to achieve and you need the bear stopped immediately. While a lot of hunters use something smaller, the Alaskan guide must have a backup rifle that is capable of immediately stopping a charge; quite often a wounded bear or go after him in the thick stuff where a charge is just feet away. The remains of a hunter and a brown bear carcass were found just a few feet apart one spring in Alaska, his .30-06 rifle and .44 mag. revolver both empty. Around the same time, I was on a brown bear hunt up there and my guide had over 350 brown bear kills he had guided. He told my partner and I that using anything less than a .416 usually required follow-up shots and shoot again as soon as you could. He got quite a laugh out of the Forest Service recommendation on 12 ga. shotguns. He had tried out such a weapon and would not have survived it had his friends not bailed him out. He used smaller rifles until he almost bought the farm and got religion on calibers. Then he went to a .458 Lott (back in the 60's) and said it was usually a 1 shot proposition. He was on his 3rd stock with that rifle when I went with him. There was a famous Alaskan guide (Phil Shoemaker I think?? -- getting old is bad) who used to write a lot in outdoor magazine and was of the opinion that a .30-06 with heavy bullets was all one needed for big bear. One day, he was mauled somewhat by one who didn't die promptlyand Phil became a fan of the .458 immediately. You will find that most of the guides who started with the .375 found it enough gun, while most of them using larger calibers did so after a life changing event using a smaller rifle that had too little margin for error. I shot my bear that trip twice with a .375 (2nd shot I was a little distracted as the sow he was with charged us) and tracked it until 9:30 PM through some the thickest stuff you ever saw. The next day, I brought a .458 (loaner from the guide) which worked much faster once we tracked him down. I'm sure critics will say that better bullet placement was the answer, but that is not always possible with such game in such conditions and it's better to have too much gun rather than too little as long as you can handle it. The world record grizzly at one time was held by a small Alaskan native woman less than 5' tall using a .22 long round (not LR) because that was all she had -- but I wouldn't recommend it for longevity. Long story short, I built a .416 and also own a .458 today -- who knows???

 

[338 Mollett]

Look people a handgun will not stop my wife after I have a drunken piss in the corner of the living room !There is a difference between killing a large aggressive animal and stopping it. Talk to some of the guides in Africa on charging dangerous animals with first hand experience.

 

[savagedasher]

Most good guides use 458 and bigger for a back up gun. They know it must be a good head shot to stop them. I'm talking brain shot only. Larry

 

[Raythemanroe]

I love to hunt with my bow, what would the guide say about that ? I have done black bear in Quebec with my bow. I have taken one with a 12g also...



Ray

 

[butchlambert]

A close buddy that I have known just over 40years has guided and gold mined in Alaska longer than most of you have been around. He had a grizzly on the roof of his cabin on his gold mine. Wife, retired US Fed Game person asked him to use pepper bear spray. Bear almost shoved it up his azz. His 338m Win. mag did the job.

 

[butchlambert]

I love to hunt with my bow, what would the guide say about that ? I have done black bear in Quebec with my bow. I have taken one with a 12g also...



Ray

Ray, What kind of bow do you use?

 

[Old Navy]

Personally I have no faith at all in my ability to make any sort of precision hit with a handgun in a bear attack situation. And with the energies involved with handguns it would need to be a head or spine shot. [Watercam]

I read an article looking at the usefulness of a handgun in a bear attack many years back in an American gun mag, probably Wolfe's 'Rifle'. It reckoned that in a typical thick cover confrontation, a large bear that attacked would be on a person before he got the revolver out of a belt-holster. The historical precedents that the writer dug up weren't exactly positive either. Most handgun toting bear attack victims who survived only shot their bear while being hugged / mauled by the brutes and had to make their way back to civilisation with serious claw wounds.

And re the point about a head shot, the Norwegian guidance states re polar bears, that if it does eventually prove necessary to shoot a bear in self defence go for the torso and keep shooting. It advises against head shots as polars have very strong skulls and the head kill zone is surprisingly small. You learn something new and potentially useful every day on the Internet. If a polar turns up on Diggle Ranges, I'm ready for it and have to hope it's a day I've got my 284 Win F-Class rifle and not a 6mm BR!

(And to think we've got people in Europe backed by EC bureaucrats who want to reintroduce wolves and bears all over the place, saying that since they were once part of the habitat, the staus quo ante should be restored. Well, digs in clay pits in southern England turn up sabre tooth tiger remains, and I don't think the average Londoner would fancy a Jurassic Park type restoration of these and similar beasts just 'cause they once lived there!)

The guys from Wyoming, Idaho and Montana will be glad to send you all the wolves you can handle free of charge. Later! Frank

 

[Outrider27]

I have, under weird circumstances, taken a 405 lb black bear with a single action revolver in .22RF (no, I emphatically don't recommend trying this without backup) - and 6 feet to my right and ready to go if that didn't work was a backup shooter with a 30-06 already aimed for the kill. No pressure on the shooter here, the bear was standing still on all 4s at a range of 15 feet, having just removed his head from the garbage can, apparently making a leisurely decision about what to do next and not the least bit concerned about the presence of two people.

You use what you have, but bigger is better where bears are concerned, imo, and shot placement will always be king, though a charging bear can make that a tough deal.

I would find the rants of those who think we should re-introduce (pick any dangerous species here) just because it used to be in the area funny if the results didn't have such potentially serious consequences. A number of years ago California decided that it was really, really necessary to protect the mountain lion more than it already was protected. Well, the effort, which, of course, contained no "safety valve" to control the mountain lion population as it increased, was pretty successful and as the population increased, so did mountain lion contacts with humans. About two years before the Navy's scheduled closing of Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, CA (so it was about 1994) I was there for a week working on a project and turned on the 6 o'clock news one night in my motel room. Seems that a lady jogger near Sacramento (about 45 miles up the road, if memory serves) had such an encounter, and the mountain lion ate her, or at least enough of her that it was fatal. As I remember, before I left on the trip home, the mountain lion was located and shot, but that won't bring the jogger back. Those who want to play those kinds of games with dangerous wildlife need to think twice about possible consequences, though that doesn't seem to be something the CA legislature was capable of, then or now.

 

[Raythemanroe]

I love to hunt with my bow, what would the guide say about that ? I have done black bear in Quebec with my bow. I have taken one with a 12g also...



Ray

Ray, What kind of bow do you use?

Hoyt Alpha Elite, 400 series Goldtip Ultralite Pro arrows with 100g Rocket broadheads..


Ray

 

[Raythemanroe]

A close buddy that I have known just over 40years has guided and gold mined in Alaska longer than most of you have been around. He had a grizzly on the roof of his cabin on his gold mine. Wife, retired US Fed Game person asked him to use pepper bear spray. Bear almost shoved it up his azz. His 338m Win. mag did the job.

Ya, when a bear that large starts charging pepper spray just doesn't have the knock down power.


Ray