Recommendation for a bear gun.

[Spitpatch]

There he come. Right outta the cheap seats!

 

[ma96782]

Aloha, Mark

 

[Xaevian]

Unless you live in griz country, keep in mind black bears are really just medium game. People hear "bear", the brain goes right to brown bear. Self defense rounds (designed for 2 leggers) are not a good choice. You need good shot placement and penetration, but anything that will work on a bigger deer works for black bear. Of course, bigger caliber leaves more room for error, but only slightly.

99% of the time, a black bear won't act aggressive to you anyway. Very rare, and usually sow/cubs and then there is the ultra rare psycho bear.

Brown and polar bears, different story. Bring slow friends for those.

 

[The Heretic]

.357 mag since they're scrawny black bears.

A .357 Mag with heavy loads is almost (maybe better) as good as a 10mm and has slightly better sectional density.

I was testing some Underwood 180gr loads this morning and got 1225 fps with my TRR8 (5" barrel) for a load advertised as 1400 fps - 100 fps faster than the same weight bullet in 10mm. I don't have a 10mm and I am temporarily without a chrono (put a bullet thru it).

The recoil was quite controllable in the TRR8, but significantly more noticeable in the Taurus Total Titanium Tracker (much lighter revolver, but also ported with ribbed grips). The Tracker weighs 28 (?) oz and the TRR8 36 oz, so the recoil difference is not surprising.

With 8 heavy load .357 mag rounds in the TRR8 (or the R8), I would feel well armed in black bear country - indeed, I have black bears that come onto my property, and cougars too.

 

[Certaindeaf]

A .357 Mag with heavy loads is almost (maybe better) as good as a 10mm and has slightly better sectional density.

I was testing some Underwood 180gr loads this morning and got 1225 fps with my TRR8 (5" barrel) for a load advertised as 1400 fps - 100 fps faster than the same weight bullet in 10mm. I don't have a 10mm and I am temporarily without a chrono (put a bullet thru it).

The recoil was quite controllable in the TRR8, but significantly more noticeable in the Taurus Total Titanium Tracker (much lighter revolver, but also ported with ribbed grips). The Tracker weighs 28 (?) oz and the TRR8 36 oz, so the recoil difference is not surprising.

With 8 heavy load .357 mag rounds in the TRR8 (or the R8), I would feel well armed in black bear country - indeed, I have black bears that come onto my property, and cougars too.

I hear you. Somehow his having a .44 skipped my mind and what Catherine? said is sound. Many .44 special factory loads are horribly underpowered and ineffective for even rabbits. I'd load 240gr SWC's going like 800-1000fps. The sharp shoulder makes full caliber holes.
For me, a favorite woods load for years has been hot loaded Lee "coke can" 140gr SWC's stuffed into 9x19 cases.. it penetrates very deeply and invariably tumbles.

 

[The Heretic]

I hear you. Somehow his having a .44 skipped my mind and what Catherine? said is sound. Many .44 special factory loads are horribly underpowered and ineffective for even rabbits. I'd load 240gr SWC's going like 800-1000fps. The sharp shoulder makes full caliber holes.
For me, a favorite woods load for years has been hot loaded Lee "coke can" 140gr SWC's stuffed into 9x19 cases.. it penetrates very deeply and invariably tumbles.

I have my G21 that can shoot .45 Super 255 hardcast flat nosed bullets at 966 fps. With a +2 extension it has a 15+1 capacity.

Not as good as a heavy .44 mag or heavy .45 LC+P, but I bet it would break bones enough to slow down a brown bear, and be more than adequate for a heavy black bear.

From what I have read, some guides in grizzly areas, advocate shooting a charging brown bear in the front shoulders then hind hip to stop (or at least slow) the charge by breaking those bones, because a frontal head shot with a handgun reaching the brain is very iffy - especially if their head is up and angled such that the bullet hits at an angle instead of perpendicular.

 

[Certaindeaf]

I have my G21 that can shoot .45 Super 255 hardcast flat nosed bullets at 966 fps. With a +2 extension it has a 15+1 capacity.

Not as good as a heavy .44 mag or heavy .45 LC+P, but I bet it would break bones enough to slow down a brown bear, and be more than adequate for a heavy black bear.

From what I have read, some guides in grizzly areas, advocate shooting a charging brown bear in the front shoulders then hind hip to stop (or at least slow) the charge by breaking those bones, because a frontal head shot with a handgun reaching the brain is very iffy - especially if their head is up and angled such that the bullet hits at an angle instead of perpendicular.

When I lived in Montana, Bob Marshall wilderness etc. I carried a .44 mag loaded with Lee's 320gr SWC and the above 9mm load, again, loaded very hot. To be honest, when I carried the 9mm I usually had my 03-A3 loaded with military ball or black tip AP because that's what was cheap back then.

 

[Xaevian]

From what I have read, some guides in grizzly areas, advocate shooting a charging brown bear in the front shoulders then hind hip to stop (or at least slow) the charge by breaking those bones,

Yes, any dangerous game that is a good plan.

 

[DirectDrive]

I don't know if you have much time to think about shot placement with a charging Griz coming at you.
Some of the after action reports talk about being in heavy brush and there's just scant seconds to react.
The Alaskan airmen story and the 9mm fishing guide story come to mind.

 

[slimmer13]

I didn't read the whole thread, but since bears don't have opposable thumbs or fine motor skills, trigger manipulation will be difficult. At the least, it will need to be something with a cut down trigger guard.

 

[The Heretic]

I don't know if you have much time to think about shot placement with a charging Griz coming at you.
Some of the after action reports talk about being in heavy brush and there's just scant seconds to react.
The Alaskan airmen story and the 9mm fishing guide story come to mind.

Training/practice

 

[The Heretic]

I don't know if you have much time to think about shot placement with a charging Griz coming at you.
Some of the after action reports talk about being in heavy brush and there's just scant seconds to react.
The Alaskan airmen story and the 9mm fishing guide story come to mind.

 

[Nick Burkhardt]

What is on my Wish List:

3" Chiappa Rhino 357Mag with the decent grips

 

[DunRanull]

Glock or Springfield XDm 10mm. I personally have a Redhawk .44, I don't trust the 6-shot .357 to have enuff gas in the tank..
I have personally shot some black bears as part of my job in the past, and a 12 ga is what I trusted. Pistol was a "WTF, over"? back up.. But the shotgun never failed.

 

[Tlock]

Unless you live in griz country, keep in mind black bears are really just medium game. People hear "bear", the brain goes right to brown bear. Self defense rounds (designed for 2 leggers) are not a good choice. You need good shot placement and penetration, but anything that will work on a bigger deer works for black bear. Of course, bigger caliber leaves more room for error, but only slightly.

99% of the time, a black bear won't act aggressive to you anyway. Very rare, and usually sow/cubs and then there is the ultra rare psycho bear.

Brown and polar bears, different story. Bring slow friends for those.

Black bears come in all shapes and sizes. Just cause they are black bears doesn't mean they are all med game. Also some of the most dangerous aggressive bears I've encountered have been the smaller boars.

 

[DunRanull]

He owns a .44mag revolver . All he has to do is switch to a lighter load.
I suggest Grizzly Cartridges .44sp 260 gr WFNGC Wide Flat nose gas check. It has a very wide flat nose with sharp edges. 950 fps. 521 ft. lbs. This has .357mag power level with a wider much heavier bullet with a much larger meplat (flat part of nose) than the .357. A review I read said it penetrates through 6 feet of pine board. The bullet is super hardcast.
Here's a link to the manufacturer, who is a NW company:

44 SPECIAL 260gr WFNGC - Grizzly Cartridge, LLC

Caliber: 44 SPECIAL Bullet Wt: 260gr Bullet Type: Wide Flat Nose Gas Check Velocity: 950 fps Rounds: 20 M.E.: 521 ft lbs. Made in the USA: Yes Recommended for: Hunting ...

grizzlycartridge.com

All semiautomatic "flat nose" loads have only small flat noses with rounded edges so they will feed. They look like a hybrid of a real bear load and a classic round nose, a design notorious for deflecting rather than penetrating. A 10mm would give you only the same power level as a .357 mag but with a bullet that I think likely to be much less effective on bear. The .44sp I suggest should be way better than either the 357mg or 10mm. I am suspicious about whether the 10mm is adequate to reliably penetrate the head of a charging bear instead of bouncing off like the round nose it resembles. And just today I happen to see a trial that suggests my suspicions are warranted.

The problem with stopping an attacking bear is you must hit it in the brain to get instant incapacitation. Anything else other than a spine shot, which is far chancier to do, might be lethal, but not lethal fast enough. It would take several seconds for the bear to bleed out even if you destroyed his heart. Plenty of time for the bear to crush your skull or neck with one bite or remove your throat or face with one swat. So you need to hit bear in the brain. Essentially between the eyes. Problem is, the grizzly bear's skull in that area is 2 - 3 inches thick or more. Difficult to penetrate. Worse yet, the area is sloped to about 30 degrees. This greatly encourages round nose bullets to deflect off the bone and just make a superficial wound in bear's skin. You will read over and over that bears can be killed with a 22, a 9mm, etc. Well, its easy to kill a bear with a shot into the head from the side, such as when you are hunting bear or harvesting a treed bear. The skull on the side is much thinner and not sloped.

So we really care about penetrating when we test potential bear loads. And there are many calibers and loads that get tested as to how much wood, water, or meat they can penetrate. The problem is, the targets all are presented with the surface perpendicular to the bullet path. This measures how well the bullet penetrates but not how well it penetrates a 30 degree sloped surface. Often the tests are also done with HPs or JHP or JSP. Even with .44mag these bullet styles are not only shaped more like a round nose, they also may open up and fail to penetrate.

In the test below, the tester uses two ceramic tiles and three layers of plywood arranged at 30 degrees to represent the grizzly bear skull. It's only about half an inch of ceramic and maybe an inch of wood. Way less serious than grizzly skull. Maybe its more like a black bear skull. But its still interesting and meaningful. The semiautomatic bullets were metal jacketed. None of them including the 10mm, even penetrated into the wood. They shattered the two ceramic tiles and bounced off.

Then the guy tried a .500 bear load. It blew through ceramic and plywood. No surprise. So would an atom bomb. Big deal. What we needed was a test of true bear loads in .357 mag, 44sp, .45, .44 mag, and .454 Casull. Hot hand loads in .44sp and .45 are famous among the old timers as stoppers of bear and boar (which also has a thick sloped skull). Based on that I would predict that true bear loads of all the revolver rounds would slam through the test target. Except maybe the .357. However, we need somebody to try it. Maybe just with 6" of pine boards. I don't think the ceramic helped. And by the time a bullet goes through 6 boards its likely to vear off and exit boards so that more boards won't help. As it stands, what we have is a relatively simple test that all the semiautomatic loads failed. That is, the semiautomatic bullets, including the 10mm, which look so much like round nosed loads, seem to act a whole lot like round nosed loads.
Here's the link:

An old timer gunsmith once recommended .45acp hardball for the blacks in Colorado... I handloaded some HOT 230 grain hardball that had a lot of snap to it and were minute of bear at closer (21 ft) ranges. They ran something over 900fps.
Never needed them and I took to carrying a .44mag 240gr in the hills anyway..

 

[The Heretic]

An old timer gunsmith once recommended .45acp hardball for the blacks in Colorado... I handloaded some HOT 230 grain hardball that had a lot of snap to it and were minute of bear at closer (21 ft) ranges. They ran something over 900fps.
Never needed them and I took to carrying a .44mag 240gr in the hills anyway..

Some FMJ projectiles have pretty soft lead (easier to swage & cheaper) and will deform quite a bit when striking a hard/dense object (like thick bone). Also, a flat meplat is preferred.

 

[DunRanull]

A .357 Mag with heavy loads is almost (maybe better) as good as a 10mm and has slightly better sectional density.

I was testing some Underwood 180gr loads this morning and got 1225 fps with my TRR8 (5" barrel) for a load advertised as 1400 fps - 100 fps faster than the same weight bullet in 10mm. I don't have a 10mm and I am temporarily without a chrono (put a bullet thru it).

The recoil was quite controllable in the TRR8, but significantly more noticeable in the Taurus Total Titanium Tracker (much lighter revolver, but also ported with ribbed grips). The Tracker weighs 28 (?) oz and the TRR8 36 oz, so the recoil difference is not surprising.

With 8 heavy load .357 mag rounds in the TRR8 (or the R8), I would feel well armed in black bear country - indeed, I have black bears that come onto my property, and cougars too.

. "I am temporarily without a chrono (put a bullet thru it)".
Bear this in mind should we need a sharpshooter around here some day...
Just ribbin ya...

 

[The Heretic]

. "I am temporarily without a chrono (put a bullet thru it)".
Bear this in mind should we need a sharpshooter around here some day...
Just ribbin ya, no offense meant...

Yeah - I was a bit bummed yesterday after that fiasco, but I wouldn't have posted the photo if I had not been willing & able to take a bit of ribbing about it.

With the TRR8 I was getting readings, but with the TTT I was not, so I kept shooting lower and lower trying to get a reading and then WHAM! I hit the chrono. I had hope I hit one of the screen stands but noooo...

 

[DunRanull]

Yeah - I was a bit bummed yesterday after that fiasco, but I wouldn't have posted the photo if I had not been willing & able to take a bit of ribbing about it.

With the TRR8 I was getting readings, but with the TTT I was not, so I kept shooting lower and lower trying to get a reading and then WHAM! I hit the chrono. I had hope I hit one of the screen stands but noooo...

Thats gonna leave a mark...



On the wallet.