Does anyone really think this is a good idea?
I had to chuckle when I came across this Remington advertisement in an old pre-WWI era sportsman's magazine, advertising the newly-introduced .380 ACP. The .380 ACP, aka 9-mm Short, would not be my first choice for a 150-pound junkie let alone a 400-pound grizzly sow.
“Da Bears.” In particular, da grizzly bear. Even its Latin classification, given it by the naturalist George Ord in 1815, conjures up fear…Ursus horribilis (“terrifying bear”)…and the mountain men would come to call the grizz “Old Ephraim”. Native American tribes afforded these fierce bears the utmost respect; there was greater honor in slaying a grizzly bear than a human foe.
Initially,
Corps of Discovery Captains Lewis and Clark regarded the Indians’ fear and awe
of grizzly bears as rather quaint and actually looked forward to their initial
encounters with the grizzly. After all, the Indians had only bows and arrows
and inferior smoothbore trade muskets while the Corps of Discovery was armed
with the latest greatest military technology in the form of .49-caliber
Pennsylvania-style flintlock Model 1792 Contract Rifles. They opined that the
grizzly would be no match for skilled riflemen.
After the
first few encounters, they changed their minds, with Lewis noting that grizzlies
were “extreemly hard to kill” and Clark describing the grizz as a “verry large
and a turrible looking animal.” Clark and one of the men required a total of
ten shots from their rifles to finally kill a 600-pound grizzly encountered on
May 5, 1805. On May 14th six hunters tried to tackle a grizzly; all
six hit the bear with their rifles on the first go-round, after which the bear
chased some of the men into the river and some into the bushes as they
desperately tried to reload their single-shot front-stuffers. It took a total
of eight hits, the last one a headshot, to kill the bear.
The explorers
of the Corps of Discovery would hardly be the last white men to underestimate
the strength of the grizzly or over-estimate their own firepower.
As previously noted, I find the “fact” that pepper spray has
been statistically “proven” to be 97% effective in stopping bear charges
dubious to say the least. On the other hand, I don’t believe that simple
acquisition of a .500 Smith & Wesson Magnum instantly makes you magically
bear-proof either.
Joe Blow can’t
just waltz into any sporting goods store, purchase some cannon-sized hogleg
revolver with a half-inch bore, and instantly transform himself from
mild-mannered Clark Kent into Dirty Harry Callahan. You have to be familiar, proficient and well-practiced
with your firearm. I remember an article in an outdoor magazine (Fur-Fish-Game, IIRC) many, many years
ago where the author encountered a trout fisherman who was packing a Smith
& Wesson Model 29 for protection against bears. When asked how well the
Magnum shot, the fisherman replied he did not know because he’d never actually fired the gun.
Not to burst
anyone’s bubble, but it really does not
matter how purely “American” your family tree is, your highest score playing Call of Duty, or how many asinine
Quentin Tarantino movies you’ve watched…you were not born with some innate ability to handle a pistol like the
Sundance Kid.
As a pistolero, I consider myself no
more than slightly above average although I started shooting a single-action
Colt .22 revolver in my early teens, was later trained on and qualified expert
with both military and police sidearms over the years, and still get in routine
range practice to this day. In my youth I hunted raccoon with a .22 revolver
and I’ve harvested a great many more mountain grouse on the ground with a .22 pistol
than I have on the wing with a shotgun. Living where we do, I can do a little
plinking whenever I get the urge to. My wife doesn’t do quite as much shooting
as I do, but she also practices regularly and has ten years worth of law
enforcement training, practice and qualification with handguns.
Elmer and Clint: I bought my .44 Magnum because I watched the guy on the right. I kept it because I learned a great deal from the writings of the guy on the left.
Having seen too many Clint Eastwood
movies, I had to purchase a 6-1/2-inch
Model 29 on my 21st birthday. I have no idea how many thousands of
rounds I’ve put through it in the three decades since, but feeding that .44 was
the reason I bought my first reloading kit and I took a whitetail and a mule
deer with it while hunting weapons restricted areas back when I still had two
fully functional eyes and 20/15 vision in the important one. Nowadays, since I
just carry it for protection rather than hunting, I wear a handier 4-inch Model
629, but the principles remain the same.
From a sheer usability standpoint,
one of the first things I did was to install a soft black rubber Hogue Monogrip
on my Model 29 to replace the original S&W Goncalo Alves checkered walnut target-style grips.
I’m an average guy, not quite 5’10” anymore, and apparently my hands and fingers
must be kinda short and stubby compared to Dirty Harry’s, because my hands
never did fit around those wood grips very well. When firing pull-patch Magnum
loads, in fact, the recoil usually required me to readjust my own grip on said walnut
grips after just about every shot. The Hogue grips on the old Model 29 and the
black synthetic S&W grips that came on my 629 fit our hands much better,
offer more positive control, and seem to help a great deal with at least
perceived recoil. I was pleased to later learn that Major John Hatcher had similar
problems with the S&W wood grips way back in 1956, so at least I know it’s
not just me.
The point of certain military and
police training is to become so familiar with particular tasks that muscle
memory and “instinct” take over in a crisis when the brain might temporarily
draw a blank or you’re distracted by shit filling your britches. The nice thing
about revolvers especially is that you can teach yourself much of what you need
to know through dry-fire drills (with Snap-Caps) before honing your technique
with live fire. Dry firing (a whole lot of it, anyway) also helps wear in and
smooth out the double action on a new revolver. No, I don’t stand in front of
the mirror practicing my John Wayne quick draw. I do still occasionally
practice, sometimes at home with dry-firing and sometimes at the range with
live fire, a smooth draw and transition into a firing stance followed
by an accurate double-tap. If you practice smooth, fast will come on its own.
Thankfully I’ve never had to actually
butt heads with a bear, but I have had a few surprise encounters, mostly with
black bears, at close quarters out in the woods. None of these encounters
required any shooting. The one grizzly bluff charge I witnessed fairly close up
was delivered so half-heartedly I knew it was a bluff charge. More often than
not, you really can’t tell if it’s a bluff or not until they’re still coming at
you full bore inside of twenty yards. When it comes to black bears, every
single one of them I’ve personally bumped into immediately swapped ends and
headed for the nearest horizon as fast as they could go as soon as they figured
out what I was. A couple have risen up on their hind legs initially, but that
was just o get a better look at what I was; afterward figuring it out, they
also took off running. I’m glad I never had to shoot but nonetheless was quite
pleased to note that in each and every encounter my revolver just seemed to
appear in my hands, aimed and ready, before I gave the action any deliberate
conscious thought. That’s what muscle memory is for.
Even if you
personally happen to be some kind of uberpistolero
whose gun play makes Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name in A Fistful of Dollars look like a lame sloth on Quaaludes, not all
handguns are created equal and when it comes to grizzlies heeding Robert
Ruark’s advice to Use Enough Gun is
critical.
Use as much gun as you can effectively manage.
I carry a
compact .45 ACP for social occasions and wouldn’t want anything but an
automatic against two-legged threats. I honestly never understood why American
law enforcement agencies clung to the revolver as long as they did. As nice as
it might be to have a semi-auto, common defensive handgun calibers like the
9x19mm Parabellum, .40 S&W, .45 ACP and even the much-touted 10mm aren’t really
enough gun against a big bruin in a situation in which you are quite literally
betting your life.
There’s an
incredible true instance (Bella Twin of Slave
Lake, Alberta in
1953) of a Canadian woman killing an extremely large grizzly bear with a .22
Long Rifle. While this proves that it can be done, it’s not something any sane
person would set out to do deliberately and/or on a regular basis.
No matter how
big your bore, however, bullet selection is still extremely important. The most
commonly available defensive pistol loads are some form of hollowpoint bullet. A
hollowpoint is designed to expand quickly upon contact with the target,
transferring its energy into the target itself and creating a larger wound
cavity. In the grand scheme of things, and especially against two-legged
predators, this is greatly desirable, but it is not necessarily universally so.
Against a big bear’s thick skull, tough hide, large and dense bones, and
multiple stout layers of ropy muscle and watery fat, you need enough penetration
for the bullet to reach something vital.
Case in point,
the first time I hunted deer with a .44 Mag, I connected on a rather long
(75-80 yards) shot on a forkhorn mulie standing broadside. I was later to find
out that the 240-grain JHP did indeed expand well and transfer energy rapidly.
Unfortunately, my shot was a bit too far forward on the body and hit the
shoulder itself instead of landing right behind it. The JHP hit the shoulder
blade and essentially exploded that entire front quarter, leaving the leg literally
hanging by a thread. Not a single bullet fragment, however, even came close to
penetrating the rib cage beneath and nothing touched the vitals. The result was
a long, slow three quarter mile (away from the truck) stern chase across the
section before the deer ducked down into an arroyo and I was able to get close
enough to administer the coupe de grace.
I also
remember when the Remington Yellow Jacket truncated cone hollowpoint ammo for
the .22 Long Rifle came out. When we used those bullets raccoon hunting, where
the shot was directed right between the eyes, on more than one occasion this
caused the coon to drop from the tree but then hit the ground fighting mad and
tangling with the dogs. Later examination revealed that sometimes the
hollowpoint would mushroom flat against the exterior of the coon skull inside
the hide but not penetrate it. Once upon a time we also needed to put down an
injured feeder pig weighing perhaps 125-150 pounds. At a range of only about
three or four feet, I drilled him neatly between the eyes with an 85-grain .32
S&W Long jacketed hollowpoint. He just ran off squealing and was later
dispatched with a .22 Long Rifle behind the ear.
For handguns, the heaviest available
jacketed soft point (JSP) is greatly superior to the jacketed hollow point in
this respect, but a heavy hardcast flat-nosed semi wadcutter is even better.
Hardcast refers to a bullet constructed with a much harder heat-treated lead
alloy which will not easily fragment and/or lose its penetrative power even if
it hits solid bone. Expansion isn’t near as important as penetration with a
handgun slug that cuts a wound channel damn near a half an inch in diameter the
whole way. As Elmer Keith once put it, “A large entrance hole is just as
important as a large exit hole; both let blood out of an animal and cold air
in.
Avoid cowboy action shooting loads
like the plague as bear medicine. Even though some are advertised as
“hardcast”, this sport calls for low recoil which comes hand in hand with low
velocity as well as lead projectiles soft enough to flatten and fall safely to
the dirt after they hit steel targets.
I personally consider the .44 Magnum
a good choice since it is about as powerful a package as the average Joe (or
Joan) can master. Although it never really caught on as a popular cartridge,
the .41 Magnum also comes very close to .44 Mag performance. It’s personally
all the smaller I would go and I still know three guys right around my area who
carry N-frame Smith & Wesson revolvers in this caliber. What may have been in
1971 Dirty Harry’s “most powerful handgun in the world” has long since been
eclipsed in that title by the likes of the .454 Casull, .460 S&W, .475
Linebaugh, .500, etc. Any of these cannonesque calibers would certainly fill
the bill when it comes to bear defense if
you can handle the weapon effectively and, I might add, if it’s not so big
and heavy and cumbersome that you tend not to carry it and thus wind up at the
moment of truth armed only with a pocket knife and a nearby rock.
Beyond a certain point, bigger does not
always necessarily equate to better. My wife and I once watched a guy at the
range playing with his brand-new X-Frame .500 Smith & Wesson Magnum. It had
a 10-1/2-inch barrel, a variable power Burris 2-7x32mm scope mounted atop it, and
sling swivels fore and aft for a leather cobra strap. IMHO, when a handgun is
too big to be carried in a holster and has to be slung over the shoulder like a rifle, it’s not really a handgun
anymore. One really would be better off just toting a decent rifle-caliber
carbine at that point.
Is it still a handgun when it requires a sling rather than a holster, and will you always have the big cumbersome thing on your person?
I forget where I originally read the phrase, perhaps it was Jack O'Connor, but the words
themselves stuck with me. “A handgun without a holster is like a rifle without
a sling.” A handgun’s whole reason for being is portability; it is carried in a
holster on your person, secure, out of the way, and hands free until it is
actually needed and used. That’s why
I went to the 4-inch 629 from the 6-3/8-inch Model 29. It’s small and handy and
easy to pack, yet I can still get it into action at a moment’s notice. You can
also use a pistol in conjunction with a flashlight or headlamp as well.
Back to the
handgun itself, more than a few people really like the good old .357 Magnum
but, even hot-loaded with the heaviest 180-grain bullets, the .357 remains essentially
just a fast-stepping .38 Special.
Case in point was “Old Number One”,
the first sow grizzly bear to be radio-collared in Yellowstone National Park.
When she finally died of old age, the US Fish & Wildlife Service did a
necropsy on her. When they did, they were surprised to find six .38-caliber
bullets which were well healed over and seemed to have been embedded in her skull
for many years with no apparent ill effects. It could not determined if the
slugs had been launched at .38 Special or .357 Magnum velocities, but either
way they failed to get the job done.
A 1983 US Forest Service study
verbosely entitled Safety in BearCountry: Protective Measures and Bullet Performance at Short Range tested a
variety of rifles, shotguns and handguns for penetration at the range of 15
yards to determine their effectiveness against bears in short-range self
defense encounters. Granted there are plenty of considerably improved
projectiles available these days, but these particular showed that the .44
Magnum with the Winchester 240-grain JSP at 1,383 feet per second penetrated
14-1/2 inches (I was surprised to see that even the relatively slow 230-grain
FMJ .45 ACP managed 14.2 inches) while the CCI .357 magnum 158-grain JSP at
1,226 fps only penetrated 9-1/2 inches. To be fair I have to note that the
testers fired only this one .357 load (and out of a 4-inch barrel at that) but
a quick peek at HSM’s Bear Loads still shows the 180-grain .357 Mag delivering
576 foot-pounds of energy while the 305-grain .44 Mag delivers 1,075. The old
USFS study’s handgun summary also noted, “The .357 S&W Magnum was the best
of the other handgun cartridges, but it was much less effective in all
categories than the .44 Remington Magnum.”
Taking into account we’re talking
about big ass Alaskan browns and 1983-vintage 240-grain factory loads, the
authors also cautioned, “The superiority of the .44 Remington Magum makes it
the cartridge choice for a backup
[original emphasis] weapon. A revolver using this cartridge should not be
considered a primary weapon for protection against bears.”
For a long
time, you had to reload your own ammo to get a good heavy hardcast Keith-style bear
load. Eventually, thankfully, the commercial ammunition manufacturers started
providing genuine bear loads ready to carry in the woods right out of the box.
For the .44 Mag examples include the Federal 300-grain Castcore LFP, the
Buffalo Bore 305-grain Heavies, Garrett Cartridge Company’s 310-grain
Hammerheads, or the HSM “Bear Loads”. If you’re shooting a Ruger Blackhawk or
Redhawk, Buffalo Bore and Garrett have even heavier and more potent +P and +P+
loads up to 340-grains. The wife and I have both gone to the HSM-brand “Bear
Loads” made right here in Montana.
In our neck of the woods, a box of 50 of these can be had for not much more
than what you’d pay for a box of 20 Federals or Buffalo Bores. The HSM .44
Magnum Bear Load launches a flat-nosed 305-grain hardcast SWC at around 1,260
feet per second.
Leave the hollowpoints at home in bear country; you need penetration rather than rapid expansion.
There are now some ammunition companies making hardcast "bear loads" for the common defensive handgun calibers but I personally wouldn't want to try to stop a grizzly with a sore tooth with a 9mm Parabellum, or even a 10mm for that matter. For non-hunting purposes I also prefer the semi-auto pistol, but most of its advantages over the revolver...larger ammo capacity, faster firing, and rapid reloads...are more important in a gun fight with two-legged predators rather than when it comes to stopping a big bruin.
In defense
against a bear attack, if you don’t settle things with the first couple of
shots the party’s probably over anyway. It can very often be extremely hard to
tell an actual grizzly attack from one of their frequent bluff charges, so a
defensive shooting could occur at distances of fifty feet or even less, with the bear itself covering better than forty
feet per second in a flat-out run. That gives you only a second and some small
change in which to stop the charge, a purpose most likely better served by
getting in one or two well-delivered hits with large, heavy slugs
with deep penetration rather than a half a dozen small pills pumped quickly
into center mass.
As noted earlier, grizzly bears have a
considerable amount of hide, muscle, meat and fat to go through in addition to heavy
and dense bone structure. They also have very low heart rates and can continue
to wreck havoc for a good ten seconds even if hit right through that particular
vital organ. If all that’s available is a head shot, although the brain is
directly between the eyes sockets, it is not directly behind them, and is located at the very rear of the skull. The
brain is about 3 inches behind the front of the skull plate, which, during a
charge, is angled at about 30-degrees, increasing the effective thickness (just
as with sloped armor plate on tanks) as well as the chances of deflection.
Especially in the old days of blackpowder rifles with their low velocities and
soft lead projectiles, a bullet could quite literally bounce right off a bear
skull.
Having recently reread
some of Elmer Keith’s books for the umpteenth time, I’ll leave you
with his advice in his own words:
“When a grizzly is coming your way,
however, a shot to the shoulder on the downhill side of the bear will
practically always roll him over and give you time for another hit. It will
stop a turn a big bear quicker than a center chest shot as a rule.”
“In a charge
the head is carried low enough to almost cover the base of the neck and upper
chest…Bear move fast and a frontal head shot on a fast moving bear is very apt
to strike the teeth or the top of the skull, when it may deflect upward. If the
bear is still, and the head held low, a shot between the eyes with a powerful
rifle will range back into the brain. If the head is carried level with the
hunter, the bullet should be aimed into the orifice of the nose. A bullet
entering here will drive back through the thin nasal membranes of the skull
proper over the brain and penetrate it easily. A sixgun bullet or even a .22
L.R. High Speed solid bullet will usually penetrate to the brain on a big bear
when thus directed as there is relatively little to penetrate but nasal
membranes and the brain itself has a thin bone covering at the back of the
nasal passage.”
“The brain of
a bear…lies in the extreme rear end of the skull and unless the head is low, so
the bullet will penetrate the heavy frontal bone squarely, or the head is held
high enough for the bullet to go back through the nasal passages to the brain,
it may and often does deflect the slug.”
Lastly, bear in mind (pun intended) once again
that the handgun is still essentially the weapon of last resort and even the
most powerful Magnum pistol delivers considerably less stopping power than a
12-gauge shotgun, which, in turn, delivers only a fraction of the power of a
good centerfire rifle caliber.
Even if I had a Jesse Ventura Predator backpack Mini-Gun, we would still religiously follow the Bear Aware precautions to avoid a confrontation in the first place. I have no
desire to ever have to kill a grizzly in self defense but neither do I believe an
animal’s life is worth more than a person’s if and when it comes down to a
difference of opinion as to who’s actually at the top of the food chain.
And after forty odd years of Federal
protection, too many griz have come to think that they are indeed at the top and have, in large part, completely lost their fear of man. Everyone from Teddy Roosevelt through Jack O'Connor to some Montana old-timers I've met all commented on how shy and well-behaved grizzlies in the Lower 48 were back in the days when they got hunted regularly.
