Study Shows Handgun Defense Against Bears is Effective: The Calibers May Surprise You!!

[YukonGold]

Nobody's brought up the gun vs bear spray point that one of these options has a significantly higher chance of killing the bear?

I mean, if both are equally effective at preventing your own demise, personally I'd like to avoid the subsequent federal investigation and public shaming that go along with a dead bear. Especially when it's not a predatory attack (which is most of the time) and especially if the bear was only planning on bluff-charging anyway.

 

[BirdManMike]

My biggest internal struggles when planning on trip into the backcountry - even if its just a short hike - are leaving my military surplus camo at home and being anything less than stealthy moving through the woods, stealthy as tho Im the last defense against pinko commies on a mission to decapitate their leadership in the defense of FREEDOM.

Commies will tell you that letting the bear know youre their so there is no encounter is the best deterrence, but is that really worth not looking and feeling like a badass? To me, 'bear aware' means being trained and ready to drop a wouldbe assailant on a dime.

 

[Sasquatchewan]

Y'all wouldn't have to worry about a thing if you just did like me; hiked around the bush blasting Katy Perry on my BOSE Bluetooth speaker!!!

 

[Straight Arrow]

Y'all wouldn't have to worry about a thing if you just did like me; hiked around the bush blasting Katy Perry on my BOSE Bluetooth speaker!!!

RULE #53: No electronics allowed in the woods. Griz Adams.

 

[bullbugle307]

Being familiar with your defense is more important than which defense you choose...Consider this dead horse beat!

Agreed. But I’m gonna beat the horse some more. Why not? I shoot rifle, shotgun, and archery pretty well. But I’m not worth a damn with a pistol and I’ve never liked carrying one loaded anywhere but on a belt style holder, and to me that’s not really compatible with carrying a pack in the mountains. I also have a strong preference for revolvers over semi auto. In Wyoming bow hunting I usually carry only spray, on the pack where it’s always accessible. I wanna be able to spray even if a bears on top of me as a last line of defense.

When I was in Alaska for my first of two summers in a remote part of Bristol Bay, we could sometimes see up to 14 different brown bears a day from the kitchen window. All of them sows with cubs. We hardly ever saw boars. I carried spray then too, but I usually had the 44 and nearly always had a semi auto shotgun with slugs if we were in a boat away from the lodge.

That is other than the first time I left the lodge by myself, no gun, no spray, and had a run in close with a huge sow and two cubs. See photo 1, that’s the sow and her cubs are in the alders behind her. I suppose her and her cubs were probably the first bears I had ever really seen in the wild at 19 years old. I stupidly got scared and tried to cross the where the lake dumps into the river when they got on the shore behind me with me wading, had to kick off a pair of hip waders that flooded and had to swim back towards the bears as the fish counters reached the opposite bank since they saw my plight and started lobbing off rounds in the air that thankfully scared all but one cub away. I was scared out of my mind, so scared in fact I was still trying to swim for my life for about 5 seconds in about an inch of water when I got back to shore. The one cub was still there, like ten yards away staring at the flailing moron but he moseyed off as the fish counters motored across the river to bail me out.

I don’t know that it’s even debatable in my mind that shotgun with slugs is the best. Just not something I’m gonna carry hunting in the mountains of Wyoming. Photo quality kinda sucks, I took a cell phone picture of my laptop screen of a few close encounters to show a coworker recently so I figured I’d tack ‘em on my post.

Photo 2 is at Brooks Lodge waiting for a plane. Those bears aren’t scary…they see hundreds of people a day in tourist seasion and they could GAF less. Photo 3s a mountain lion that creeped on me a few years back in Wyoming. Had my 06 that time, but he backed off once he figured out I wasn’t the deer he was looking for.

 

[shrapnel]

Nobody's brought up the gun vs bear spray point that one of these options has a significantly higher chance of killing the bear?

I mean, if both are equally effective at preventing your own demise, personally I'd like to avoid the subsequent federal investigation and public shaming that go along with a dead bear. Especially when it's not a predatory attack (which is most of the time) and especially if the bear was only planning on bluff-charging anyway.

I haven’t heard of a single mauling from a bear making a “bluff” charge…

 

[Stocker]

Just learn karate like me, it’s how I get my salmon.

 

[ccc23454]

guy getting ready for his road hunt in bear country this fall!

 

[WVTXn]

 

[Jim/Wa]

Timothy Treadwell has entered the conversation

As I recall, he had no protection, just a cast iron skillet. Bear 1, Lodge 0.