Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 180 grain Buffalo Bore .357 load for grizzly.

^^^^^^???

I wouldn't hold my breath. Unless the shot is in the exact right spot.

It's almost laughable when people recommend aiming for the chest area since it's the biggest area to aim at. As stated in this thread. The 9mm is capable of getting the job done however the feela that was successful with that operation was using Buffalo bore bear ammo and used a head shot to kill the bear. Two extremely important details

Perhaps Phil will comment since he’s here; I don’t recall a head shot in his description of the incident - but it’s been a few years.

'I could get three hits with the 10mm shooting 200 grainers at 1150 in the same time that I could get one hit with the .44 shooting 300 grainers at 1150."
Pa: Why is the first shot with 44 slower than the first shot with a 10mm?

In my experience things happen so fast when you have an actual problem with a brown bear that the best you can do is shoot the middle of the brown blur with something big enough to matter. The idea of aiming at a specific spot is often mere fantasy. There are some exceptions to this, such as when a bear is perhaps not being as serious about things as the person feeling threatened is and the bear gets shot for it. Another possibility is with the way involuntary human response to stress works, whereby you end up experiencing an event in slow-motion time. In that circumstance it can seem as though you've got plenty of time to sort things out, but that's beyond your control and is nothing to count on.

Due to the angles presented with the event and ranges at which they occur, defensive shootings of bears necessitate penetration through skulls, necks, shoulders, or all three before the bullet can drive through the chest. The best case is a mix of bullet expansion and penetration, but if I was forced to choose between the two I would pick penetration every time.

One thing that changed my thinking when it came to handguns and bears is actual experience. I've killed quite a bit of game with things ranging from 9mm to stoutly loaded .45 Colts, including various loads in the .357 and .44 special. I've also seen a number of deer killed by the .454 of a friend. As a result of this experience I decided that handguns kill stuff in a way more akin to a broadhead than a rifle. I also learned that out to about 75 yards there's not much difference in actual killing performance between something like a .44 special shooting 255gr WFN at 1050 and a .45 Colt shooting a 300gr LFN at 1250. Both penetrate sufficiently, and holes do the killing. The .454 with lighter bullets at greater velocity hit deer harder, but with the trade off of a heavier, higher recoiling gun shooting loads with less penetration than things going slower. As Mule Deer alluded to previously, no handgun round is going to solve problems as decisively as a rifle.

I've always generally been a revolver guy when it comes to my choices in outdoor handguns. A couple years ago my wife asked about getting a handgun for bear defense so her hands could be freed up while walking the dogs and dealing with kids during walks around town. She's never much cared for revolvers, so it was pretty obvious a 10mm would be a good choice for her. I'm not a bandwagon sort of person, the more popular something becomes the more likely I am to avoid it. So the more popular 10mms became, the more stubborn I became about liking my S&W 69 for my brown bear country handgun needs. But I yielded to what would work best for my wife and bought a couple 10mms for her to try out. In the process I did load development and shot them quite a bit myself.

The shot timer was a revelation. I discovered that at the distances where I'd most frequently sorted out charging bears with a rifle (2-12 yards), that I could get three hits with the 10mm shooting 200 grainers at 1150 in the same time that I could get one hit with the .44 shooting 300 grainers at 1150. I realized the following:

1.) I know for a fact the 10mm load will penetrate just as sufficiently as the .44 load will.
2.) Given the limitations of a handgun compared to a rifle, multiple hits quickly are a great idea.
3.) The 10mm lets me get more behavior changing goodness into a bear faster than the .44 does.

For bear defense, a handgun is a weapon of compromise and convenience, a get-offa-me gun, and a rifle's sidekick. A smart person would never choose to fight a bear with just a handgun but nevertheless carrying a handgun in bear country is a great idea for people who invest the time to be proficient with one. All of which is to say that if a person liked their .357, it might not be my choice but I reckon a good 180gr .357 load would have sufficient penetration to make it into a bear's vitals on a frontal angle.