65: Perspective from a rookie bear hunter and FWIW.....I agree with what Klik said about the larger stuff working a bit better on these really large and/or nasty animals.
Normally I am not much of a "medium bore" guy for much hunting,finding 30 cal and below to be easily up to the task,but big bears are skosh different in temperament and physiology from the ungulates,and the first time I hunted them I watched their behaviour a lot and concluded these big grizzlies are highly intelligent,and capable of some rationale thought.
None of this has much to do with what it takes to kill them,but it does give me a very high level of respect for them, to the point where I am truly not certain I ever want to kill another,having taken two of them.
I was about 8 days into a 10 day hunt.Things unfolded quickly after the guide and I had a windshift blow an approach on a male and female....they disappeared into the brush,off the beach,and we turned to walk away,the guide getting about 30-40 yards ahead of me as I continued to lolligag for some reason,when I turned and looked back,as the male came back out,very suddenly...
..I hissed to the guide and flopped prone into 6 inches of salt water,rested over a rock,and touched off the 375....I thought I was on vitals but grizzlies have that "hump"and never having shot one before,my shot was high(rookie mistake here);he went down and was back up in a flash and my second shot as he ran for the alders caught him squarely through the lungs,but I could not know this at the time....in a flash he was gone....and I mean in a "flash".
You simply cannot believe the speed and coordination of these animals when they are under stress until you see it with your own eyes......as he hit the alders he was a "blur".....
Hans and I got to where he was hit;there was a LOT of blood on the beach.....where he hit the alders,the ground dropped down where the alders grew,and there was no blood on the ground,which struck me as strange.....then I looked "up",at eye level,and noticed blood and hair,in the alder tops,6 feet off the ground.....in thinking through what I had seen after the second shot,but did not register,is that the bear had "swum" through the tops of these alders like a squirrel over the tops of a front yard hedge,in a blur and with such speed that I simply cannot describe it....(suffice to say he made a whitetail buck running across a hardwood ridge,look like a plodding oaf.)
This situation will give a guy pause.....you will think very hard about what you have here,and do not follow up with impunity. We waited 45 minutes and followed up....he had gone maybe 50 yards back into the forest,swung left of his backtrail into a blowdown,and died there,his chin rested on a log.My first shot was high;the second made a gaping hole through both lungs with a large exit.
There were lots of mistakes here by me;I was wound up,in a hurry,concerned he would disappear again, hurried the first shot and did not think it through.Bears are built different and the same placement would have dumped an elk in his tracks.
I vowed I would never let a dangerous animal make any tracks again if I could help it.My next brown bear never made it 10 yards from where he was hit.
I have seen lots of elk sized critters killed with smaller bore rifles up through 338;the volume of blood and the wound channels created through that bear by the 375 was in a different category alltogether.The amount of blood was reassuring and a comfort to see on that beach.....
Which is why,to me, conversations about minimum calibers and theoretically perfect shots with small bores,on these great animals,become completely irrelevant in the context of actual field conditions.....and if forced to choose between a 6.5 and a 30 caliber for these great bears,I would, every time,take the larger bore diameter in a rifle I can shoot......given time to reconsider,for brown bear anyway(not interior grizzly which I have not hunted)I would look to a 9.3x62 if it is more comfortable to shoot but a 375 would be my first choice.
It is nice to sit here and ponder this stuff on a keyboard,how we will react,what shot we will take or won't,how we will exercise restraint and coolness under pressure with the little rifle.But you can be cool as a cucumber and still blow it.I know I did...
Yes it is always about bullet placement,but it is also about telling bullet effect....and it is also about pieces of bear clockwork on the ground in front of you,when things happen in nano-seconds,and the wheels fall off.So I don't ever wonder about the minimums required.I want bullet construction and bore diameter when dealing with these animals.
I wonder how reassured I'd have felt if this whole thing unfolded with a 6.5?
Sorry for the long post but I think you get my drift.Again,a rookie perspective on the matter,and FWIW.
