Originally Posted by
shrike
What bear? An average blackie of 130-220 lbs? Good bullets and good aim, a 10 mm will do probably.
A 350lbs and up Grizzly I would not. Although in theory a good hard bullet in the brain will do.
For bigger bears just go straight to the 44 mag or souped up 45 cal with hard cast bullets.
They will kill a big bear but not sure if it will stop a charge, unless hit in the brain.
Best always carry a rifle. In the late 1970's or early 80's, I test fired 12 ga foster type slugs into a 800 lbs dead polar bear's shoulder from 6-10 feet away. The Remington or Winchester slugs flattened like silver dollars on the shoulder blade. 12 ga. SSG from 10 feet just made it through the hide and blubber again no penetration into the chest cavity. I would not hesitate using it on the average blackie, but NOT on big bears.
A rifle is needed .
I haven't read all 29 pages, but of the one or two I've read, this guys nails it.
I find these endless "bear" threads humorous, annoying and interesting.
I have killed 9 black bear and only one with a handgun, the latter that was a very bad fight with a small black bear I shot 6 times with a .44 Magnum {all lethal and if I do say so myself, demonstrative of darn good pistoling under very tough conditions!} and I've hunted killed bear with friends, and live in and work and recreate in bear country, owning a ranch slam in the middle of bearyland. Due to the wondrous anti-wisdom of the Federal government, grizzly continue to expand their range into my stomping grounds which is as annoying as the worthless tripe they gave us in wolves. My friends, my son who is a production forester with a timber company and thereby in the bush constantly and myself all carry what here would be seen as ridiculous, stupid, useless guns for defense.
And so they might be, but they are what we are willing to carry everywhere we go.
The fellow here is dead right. Shotguns are utterly NOT what the millrun internet supposer suggests them to be. Handguns are what they are; lethal and sometimes handy things that might help, but cannot be counted on to perform as one might wish tho many {that is almost all} are "lethal" tho you don't know the timing of the decease and thereby don't know how much mayhem said soon-to-be dead bear may cause before experiencing it. If you really need a defense against a mean bear dedicated or even sort of half-dedicated to hurting you or converting you to energy + feces, carry a rifle, and make sure it is a good stout rifle of good bore and energy and bullet persuasion, cuz all of the preceding matter.
I also own a 1000 yard range and can shoot whatever I want on whatever I wish and test bore and cartridge on everything we can conceive of testing from steer skulls to steel plate and bags of sodden grass mulch and wheel rims. with service-type pistols I've killed literally truckloads of butcher stock from the 40 to 250 pound range and shot steers with service pistols on top of the heap. On really resistant media...the shotgun is an unreliable companion. I've read that some with good experience trust upper bores loaded with solid shot, at least round ball and heavily loaded RB at that. I suppose that makes sense.
Guys, face it, 99.9 % of the folks speculating about this issue will never even see a live bear outside of a zoo. 99.99999% of the 330 million Muricans will never actually kill a bear in a fight.
But it seems that some 500 million are interested in what they might need to rely on if that day happens.
Which is the part that makes these threads so interesting.
This is the pipsqueak that caused me so much trouble, as small ones around here so often do...
I accept with sincere belief the doctrine of faith as handed down to us from the Apostles by the orthodox Fathers, always in the same sense and with the same interpretation.
Pope Pius X
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