Contents; Are Heavy Guns Effective…
Edit excerpt from .357 Magnum
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ARE HEAVY HANDGUNS REALLY EFFECTIVE PROTECTION AGAINST LARGE PREDATORS?
The following is a short list excerpt from a Remington Arms ballistics listing 1989;
.357 magnum; Bullet Weight Energy ft/lbs
Wt. Grs. Muzzle 50 Yds 100 Yds
110 410 292 232
158 535 428 361
180 524 443 388
.44 Magnum 180 1036 745 551
240 741 623 543
210 1042 803 634
[Rifle]
.300 win. Mag. 180 3501 3011
This short list gives a good approximation of what each of the two calibers will do; note that muzzle velocity is gauged from eight feet off of the barrel. There is a considerable drop off from muzzle to fifty yards and a user of guns should always gauge from the fifty yard specification; not from the muzzle
Summer is coming soon and hikers, hunters and rock hounds will be heading into the mountains for their summer fun. With the pending repeal of the gun laws, some of those
people will be belted up with the so called ‘heavy’ hand guns; feeling secure that they are well protected. Are they? Perhaps if they read the following before they enter the bush someone’s life will not be lost; every year we here of someone getting mauled or killed by bear because they were poorly armed or did not know how to handle their situation.
From thirty years of living with large predators I have developed a guide line; 3000 foot pounds of hitting power for a charge from a grizzly; 2000 foot pounds for a charging black bear. The average ‘heavy’ hand gun has less than 500 foot pounds of useable hitting power; although some ‘hot’ loads will reach about 1000 foot pounds in the forty calibre range.
The problem is the bobbing head of a bear; charging at forty miles per hour; it requires expertise to hit; few have the required pro-efficiency. This means that the animal must be body shot. A charging large animal, shot through the heart, can still make one hundred yards; the heart is a very small target; a lung shot animal can go for miles. This means that the gun used must add shock [to knock out the nervous system] as well as penetration to severe the vitals of the charging animal. Few hand guns have that capability.
Wild animals are built to take extreme body shock. They are constantly battered by the elements and each other and over time their bodies have adjusted such that they can recover and react almost instantly to impacts that would kill a human being. Also, all animals in the wild fight to the end when aroused – the last thing a grizzly does is bite the dirt beneath its muzzle – so when one carries a weapon for defence in the bush against the wild kingdom’s domain, carry the appropriate weapon. One cannot scare off a mad bear or for that matter any mad wild animal; to stop it one must kill or be killed.
The following is a true episode, where defence from a bear was acquired by a .357 magnum. The .357 magnum is a mid-range heavy hand gun and many people count on it for protection against bear. Read on and see how well it works; note how important the dog is…..
Excerpt edited Casey COTTRELL.
In 1976 when I arrived at Mess Lake I had three guns; a .22 semi automatic, an old .303 Parker Hale Supreme and a Ruger Black Hawk single action four inch barrel .357 magnum. It was my intention to use the .357 for protection against bears while I used the .22 to get small game. From what I had been given to understand the plan would work. Gossip and stories from people who had used the .357 magnum suggested that the gun would blow away anything in its path. There is a rule that a person should pay attention, not only to what is being said, but to who is telling the story.
The area, unbeknown to me, was a haven for big boar grizzly and blacks. Some of the big boar grizzly weighted in at as much as 1400 pounds. Now a smarter man would have done a little math after seeing the first 10 inch grizzly track, however somehow the
simple math of pitting a handgun against a draft horse size grizzly never entered into the logic centers of my mind. The stories stated that the gun would work, so away we go merrily tramping through the mountains feeling safe in blind trust. The mountains have a
BLACK BEAR BOAR
way of taking the greenhorn out of a man or, more finally, taking the man out of the greenhorn; which ever happens depends on how fast a man can learn and on a little more than just a little luck. My first exam was due.
The plan was to take supplies to the line cabin down on Mess Lake some 12 miles south. Supply runs are gruelling runs; always heavy. To keep the weight down I left the .22 at the home cabin and packed the .357 Magnum. I had a fishing line stashed at the lake so I could feed the dog and myself well enough. The only need of a gun was for if I ran across a bear with a bad attitude. My partner Blu was a fifty pound blue heeler, husky, collie cross; tough as stone; smart as a whip and loved to fight anything bigger than he was – especially if it was black. He was allowed to run interference ahead of me on the trail; always a smart move when in bear country on trails lined with thick willow bush or balsams along the side. With the dog in the lead he would awaken any sleeping beauties loafing along side the trail well in advance giving me room for a chance to either walk around the animal or if necessary position myself for a good shot.
But Nature never plays from the minds of man. I had stopped for a smoke and a rest at the bottom of the hill leading off the foothills of the center mountain where my home cabin was. I was some three miles into the trip when Nature handed me my exam. It was hard to tell if the 200 pound black boar was following us or had just stumbled onto the trail right behind us. Any way you look at it he was only a hundred feet away and still pacing fast when I first saw him. As soon as I spun to meet the bear Blu picked him up and instantly attacked; a grey streak straight at the boar. But bear have a strange ambivalence toward dogs; they fear them and they love them – for lunch. The boar spun away from the charging dog and with a massive leap landed a good ten feet up the trunk of a large pine. He hung there on the pine like an oversized squirrel eyeing the dog below him. His intentions were clear. He was timing the jumping around of the dog below him; once he had the dog timed he would take a back leap off the tree onto the dog. It took scant time for me to get to the tree and even less time to realize that if I got too close the bear would use me for a target instead of the dog. What to do? I didn’t really want the bear, but I could use the hide and meat. I decided to take the bear. The range was thirty feet at best and the bear was broadside to me on the tree; an easy shot for a guy that took third place in his division in pistol shooting in the military. I centered the sights on the heart and squeezed off. Nothing! Another shot put in the same place got results. The bear came off the tree like he’d been catapulted; straight at the dog. Blu, quick on his feet ducked the leap and proceeded to launch a ground assault on the boar. The boar, wanting nothing of the dog on the ground, raced into the thick brush heading uphill. But Blu was an exceptionally fast runner and the bear could not outrun him so once again it took to a large pine. This time it went high up into the limbs of the pine about twenty feet off the ground. Spread out on the large limbs he made a good target. I was standing about twenty feet from the trunk of the tree for the shot; nothing? Another shot; and another; and another; the bear acted like it was un-hit. Puzzled I stepped a little closer to see if I could see blood. At that point the bear backed down the tree to about ten feet off the ground and now only fifteen feet from me. Suddenly he jumped straight out from the pine, right at me. It happened so fast I knew that I was beat; but from somewhere reflexes and common sense came together and I dropped flat to the ground just as the bear hit the ground in front of me. His momentum was so great that he could not stop and he sailed over my outstretched legs. As he crossed over my body I fired three fast rounds, point blank, into his rib cage; then he was gone with Blu in hard pursuit. By now I was more than puzzled. I was certain that I was hitting the animal; couldn’t have missed the last three shots. Maybe my sights were off; or maybe I was having an off day for shooting. That happens now and again. These thoughts plagued my mind as I raced after the dog and the bear. A hundred yards caught me up with the howling chatter of the dog. The boar had stopped and was rolling on the ground. As I arrived he spotted me and tried to charge. A bolt of fear hit my gut. This guy had nine rounds in his hide and I could not stop him. How am I going to stop the charge? But the bullets had finally taken their toll and he only managed to charge a few feet before he collapsed and died. My sigh of relief was drowned out by my frustration in not being able to kill the animal clean. I’ve never liked messy kills and this was one of my worst. The mystery deepened when I checked out the bullet holes. Almost every bullet was a kill shot yet the animal had not died. I had never seen that before. Some animals just die hard because of the adrenalin complex in their system, but when the bullets are in kill locations death should not take as long as it took that bear to die. Further inspection showed that there was insufficient penetration of the lead. The large calibre and low power was just not sufficiently lethal to effect a proper kill. Bear are a tough animal and I had been very lucky to survive that encounter; in fact without the help of the dog, such would not have been the case.
HOME CABINS
BEAR SPRAY
While on the subject of protection from bear, let’s have a look at the usage of bear spray. Manufacturers advertise their products to sell, at all costs. Usually, as in the case of bear sprays, they will chose an idealized situation and use it for their advertisement; e.g.; The bear is approaching the hiker on all fours, walking and the hiker sprays the bear; then the bear is blinded and runs away or grovels in agony. Ya! Sure.
In thirty years in the mountains I have had seven ‘I want your butt’ charges – not one was a walk in and all were three years old boar grizzlies; most came in at forty miles an hour and started from sixty feet or less. Let’s have a look at one of those charges using bear spray instead of my .300 Winchester magnum which packs 3550 fbs of muzzle energy.
Let’s assume that I had the can of spray in my hand; the grizzly charged from behind from sixty feet away; a three year old grizzly boar weighing in at about eight hundred pounds and charging at sixty feet per second [about forty miles per hour]. 800lb times 60 fps= 48000ftlbs/sec of hitting power. Now, I would have had to wait until the bear was about fifteen feet away; that means he is ¼ of a second away traveling at forty miles an hour; then I hit the button. What do you think would have happened to me? Can I turn an 800 lb, forty mile an hour grizzly with spray in ¼ of a second? I don’t think so! Its momentum, even if blinded would have carried it into me one quarter of a second later and I would have been hit by 48000 foot pounds/sec of hate. The rest would be self explanatory.
But let’s be a little more general so that the rules will apply to all case scenarios. Wild predators have an interesting characteristic. When they are watching a potential target they set their muscles in one of two ways; they are either set to run away, or set to charge. This gives the user of bear sprays one of two case scenarios; he sprays the bear and because it is set to charge,- it does and it kills him; or the bear is set to run away and when he sprays the bear…..he makes it mad and it kills him.
Let’s face it, even if the hiker, hunter or whom so ever, is lucky enough to drive a bear off of him with bear spray, by the time the bear leaves, the poor fellow is so tore up, lying in the middle of nowhere, that he will probably die of his wounds anyway.
One other problem with bear spray is wind. If a hiker walks into a grizzly, usually it is because the grizzly could not smell him; in other words, the bear was up wind from the hiker. This creates a major problem. The wind must be coming from the bear to the hiker and if the hiker sprays at the bear, the spray will catch the wind and return to the hiker leaving the hiker incapacitated and the bear untouched; a very deadly situation. Wind in the bush is never the wind that blows in the opens and often circulates in
unpredictable directions. The probability that one would have an ideal situation to spray a bear without wearing the spray is very low.
But for those convinced that bear spray is the way to go, let’s look at it from a technical position. When a person loads their pack, they are facing the back of the pack; so, you put the can of spray in the left hand pocket. Now, the bear arrives. Stay calm! Take off the pack. Opps! Now which side is the can of spray on? No! Now you are facing the pack from the front and the can of spray is on the right side. How long is that going to take a fear crazed mind to figure out?
Now let’s see; it took about two seconds to take off the pack; three or four seconds to find the can of spray - if one is calm; six seconds total – and there’s that sixty feet a second charging bear – ‘up on it’s hind legs sixty feet away, arms folded across its chest; right foot tapping the ground impatiently, asking you in an impatient growl, “Are you ready for my charge yet?”.’ Ya! Sure!
A rifle comes off the shoulder and fires in one second or less!
A quote to remember;
“A person can walk through the bush for twenty years and never need a gun once
Or
A person can walk through the bush without a gun and need it once – and never need it again.”………..Casey