Recommendation for a bear gun.

[The Heretic]

Thats gonna leave a mark...



On the wallet.

Yup - my wallet is a bit thin right now so not going to replace the chrono soon.

 

[dangerranger60]

Hey team,

I am looking for a good bear gun for my dad who lives in Prescott, AZ. A guy was just mauled and partially eaten by a black bear (very rare) about ten minutes from their place. Dad knows his way around firearms, but at 81 I'm a little reluctanct for him to use his trusty .44MAG as that sucker kicks like a scalded mule and last time he had it at the range, I could tell he was having trouble controlling the recoil. I like a revolver for this task and am thinking 10mm. I've never shot a 10mm revolver, but I already know it's more manageable than the .44. I know the ten is a lower energy round but I think it will penetrate enough to give the bear second thoughts if not turn him into a nice rug.

Any suggestions? Thank you in advance.

If you reload, Make him some 44 mag loads with the heaviest bullet and a little less power. You can find 240 gr ammo at 975 fps that is marketed as Cowboy action ammo. This is pushing it toward the 45 Colt with a 255, 260 or 280 Gr bullet at just under 900 FPS. It uses a heavy for caliber bullet at a little less speed to even out the difference between a Magnum load with a lighter bullet.
If he is looking at buying a new gun the 45 Colt will have more factory loads that hit hard with less recoil. a 45 Colt with a 250 gr bullet at 850 to 900 fps is a proven load. and there are a lot of guns out there that shoot 45 Colt. Good Luck DR

 

[Alexx1401]

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.

They have some NICE .44sp loads now but factory was and many still are VERY low powered. Makers were worried about the models older than me still floating around that were made for BP. Before the CC market got them making nice small autos this got me to learn to roll. Bought first one then a couple more of those old Charter 5 shot .44's. Ammo was hard to find and when you could it sucked and back then us common folk could not order it. So it got me to try my hand at rolling. Now days there are of course some NICE .44 sp factory loads out there. I still just prefer one of the auto's since they are tame to shoot and easier to keep close at hand. Still do miss some of the large bore wheel guns I have had pass through my hands. When I see what they sell for now I often wish I had kept a couple. Never been a Glock fan but, stuff like this makes the 10mm models they make really shine. Hard to beat having 16 rounds of nice 10 in an easy to keep with you and easy to shoot package.

 

[Certaindeaf]

They have some NICE .44sp loads now but factory was and many still are VERY low powered. Makers were worried about the models older than me still floating around that were made for BP. Before the CC market got them making nice small autos this got me to learn to roll. Bought first one then a couple more of those old Charter 5 shot .44's. Ammo was hard to find and when you could it sucked and back then us common folk could not order it. So it got me to try my hand at rolling. Now days there are of course some NICE .44 sp factory loads out there. I still just prefer one of the auto's since they are tame to shoot and easier to keep close at hand. Still do miss some of the large bore wheel guns I have had pass through my hands. When I see what they sell for now I often wish I had kept a couple. Never been a Glock fan but, stuff like this makes the 10mm models they make really shine. Hard to beat having 16 rounds of nice 10 in an easy to keep with you and easy to shoot package.

Yep, there's some good rounds, especially from the smaller manufacturers. You have to know what you're flinging. Oh, I had a bulldog too, 3" stainless hammerless back in Montana too.. I used that same 320gr SWC with an obscene (I repent) amount of Red Dot.. lesson learned but it was to be expected and lasted surprisingly long all things considered.

 

[solv3nt]

If it's black, fight back. If it's brown, lie down. If it's white, good night.

 

[DunRanull]

If it's black, fight back. If it's brown, lie down. If it's white, good night.

Wise words indeed...

 

[Spitpatch]

While ballistics discussions are fun, the wet dishrag to be thrown into the discussion is the overwhelming encounter evidence that shows Bear Spray as far more effective than firearm deployment toward a favorable outcome.

Packing both is the best practice.

 

[Certaindeaf]

If it's black, fight back. If it's brown, lie down. If it's white, good night.

You want the gauge of 12 with slugs if at all possible.

 

[DunRanull]

While ballistics discussions are fun, the wet dishrag to be thrown into the discussion is the overwhelming encounter evidence that shows Bear Spray as far more effective than firearm deployment toward a favorable outcome.

Packing both is the best practice.

Bear spray more effective? That is blatant nonsense. Lord have mussy!

 

[ilikegunspdx]

You want the gauge of 12 with slugs if at all possible.

I hear you are supposed to fire two blasts.

But then one could always follow up with 18 more blasts just to be sure (ie 8760 grains of lead)

Siaga drum.mov

• ilikegunspdx
• Feb 14, 2022

2 slugs on non bear target:

FullSizeRender.MOV

• ilikegunspdx
• Jul 4, 2023

 

[OrPackrat]

10mm, it's easy to shoot compared to 44mag especially with a full size my wife hates the recoil on a ultralite 38spl snub nose but will shoot a full size 10mm and love it..

For my "bear" rounds, I have for my Glock40 10mm 6" barrel or my Girsan 1911 10mm 6" barrel is 10mm 125gr TUI solid copper rounds.. Deep penetrating like an underwood extreme penetrator but a bigger wound cavity (the 9mm TUI vs 9mm extreme penetrators in ballistics gen test).

Love the way the 1911 shoots more than the Glock40.

Looking at getting a couple more 10mm full size like the S&W and maybe something else depending on what I find and like...

 

[leverite]

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:

Ditto the above...but with Honey Badger bullets. Black Hills ammo.

 

[leverite]

While ballistics discussions are fun, the wet dishrag to be thrown into the discussion is the overwhelming encounter evidence that shows Bear Spray as far more effective than firearm deployment toward a favorable outcome.

Packing both is the best practice.

This is wishful thinking based on politicized studies with predetermined outcomes.
Bear spray failure are orders of magnitude more likely than handgun failures.
You won't usually have time to shift to firearm after your bear spray enrages the bear or blows back in your face.
Google Dean Weingarten and bear attacks database.

 

[yakyakgoose]

Glock G20. Ive run into many, many bears in Colorado and Idaho. Been charged a couple times.

One thing people don't consider about guns are their use as a noise maker. I have a policy that if I see a black bear and it isn't running the other way within 5 seconds, Im shooting into a tree next to it. Black beears should be scared of you....period. So if it's not, mitigate the situation before it has a remote chance of escalating by scaring it with the gun. I don't think Ive ever had a bear stick around for more than two warning shots.

 

[Bobbygun]

Spray as far more effective than firearm deployment toward a favorable outcome.

Not if that "favorable outcome" is a filled bear tag.

 

[OldBroad44]

Glock G20. Ive run into many, many bears in Colorado and Idaho. Bean charged a couple times.

One thing people don't consider about guns are their usee as a noise maker. I have a policy that if I see a black bear and it isn't running the other way within 5 seconds, Im shooting into a tree next to it. Black beears should be scared of you....period. So if it's not, mitigate the situation before it has a remote chance of escalating by scaring it with the gun. I don't think Ive ever had a bear stick around for more than two warning shots.

Good advise.

One night when my duck flock started giving alarm calls, I went to and opened the living room window that has the screen off, as usual accompanied by a flashlight and Buddy, my edc, a SW 686 snubby .357 mag. Spotlighted a bear. He was about 30 yards away, coming toward me and my duck pen. I yelled at bear. (The living room window is on the second floor; I was in no danger even without gun.). Bear was totally unimpressed by being spotlighted and yelled at. He kept coming toward me and the ducks' night pen. I put a shot into the ground next to him. Bear evaporated. That is, he responded so quickly and ran so fast it was hard to even see which way he went. One instant he was there. The next instant he was gone. He never came back.

I live not far from McDonald Forest. The occasional bear or cougar isn't a surprise. However, I was expecting a coon or possum or even skunk. Those are the usual predators who come after my ducks. When you're expecting a racoon, and you see the eyes of a black bear in your flashlight beam at night, boy are those eyes huge and far apart.

Too bad it was the wrong time of day and year and I had no bear tag. That woulda been the easiest bear hunt ever.

 

[Joe13]

I'm in the .357 club.

GP100 - longest barrel he can handle.

A 6" weighs about 3lbs loaded and the kick from a heavy bullet is very manageable.

Carrying a 3lb gun on the hip everywhere is not the most comfortable thing though even for a large and mostly in shape guy so maybe something he will more likely carry and hopefully never need would be a compromise.

Unfortunately if recoil is an issue there will have to be a compromise somewhere.

 

[Andy54Hawken]

Awww....quit fooling around...M18A1 Claymore mine and be done with it...
Andy

 

[Alexx1401]

Yep, there's some good rounds, especially from the smaller manufacturers. You have to know what you're flinging. Oh, I had a bulldog too, 3" stainless hammerless back in Montana too.. I used that same 320gr SWC with an obscene (I repent) amount of Red Dot.. lesson learned but it was to be expected and lasted surprisingly long all things considered.

For as cheap as those damn little guns were back then they were quite well made. I bought one of the "Target" models. Had large oversize grips and 4inch tube with adj sights. After trying it out had a Smith shorten the tube and keep the adj sight. Then put Pachmayr compact grips on it. Started rolling some rounds with 200gr LSW loaded to "warm". Worked so damn well I ended up buying 2 more. Used to see them a lot in pawn shops back then and few seemed to want them. All of them I bought looked like they had been shot very little if at all. Lot of people must have bought them back then and never really used them. By the time I had the 3d one and was back at the Smith he laughed and said "you again?"
Still often wish I would have hung onto at least one of those things.

 

[slimmer13]

Bear spray more effective? That is blatant nonsense. Lord have mussy!

It depends on what your goal is. If it's killing a charging bear, a firearm is obviously going to be more effective. The problem is that there's a good chance of it killing you before it knows it's dead.

If you're trying to survive a charging bear, bear spray is widely recognized by people that spend a lot of time in bear country as a better choice for instantly changing a bears mind and rendering them incapable of furthering an attack.