Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Guns for bear protection in Alaska??

thanks, 458. it's weird though. i had felt i was safe. today i read about that guy killing the bear on the russian so i wonder 'if the spray is good why wasn't he using it?'

I'm guessing if you have bear spray and a revolver on you and you feel you're about to be attacked, I'm guessing the average person will reach for the revolver, even if it's not the right decision.

I believe Phil is exactly right in what he said. I'm not a "redundant what-if" type of player when it comes to bears (though, truth be told, I tended more in that direction early on. I think it's a common characteristic of the inexperienced to over-think/theorize potential situations and plan extravagantly for them.) I have lived around wild grizzlies (bears that don't interact much with humans like they do in some parts of the state) for nearly 30 years and I've fired weapons of various types many dozens of times to avoid problems with bears; even more times no weapon at all was needed. The single bear I've DLP'ed happened just two years ago, and that was an animal that wasn't "charging"; it was simply an animal that seemed to have very bad intentions and wouldn't leave us alone even inside our cabin. The bear was a younger animal, probably an adolescent, and displayed the judgement not uncommon to younger members of many species. I have wondered if rubber projectiles might have prevented its killing, but it was an animal that took more warning shots in close sequence without "getting it" than any other I've been around over the years. Consequently, when it came back a couple hours later and the whole scene was being repeated (at 2 AM), I shot two more times before I used lethal intent. I'm sure there have been others I could have DLP'ed without any repercussions besides the paperwork that this one involved, but we have always managed to find other solutions.

Knowing the country or terrain where you are headed can be helpful in making a good choice in what, if any, weapon to take. I think it makes sense to have a single weapon to keep track of and think about. Then you pay attention, stay alert, and avoid situations that might make you become dependent only on the weapon you're carrying. Lethal bear encounters can almost always be avoided; most attacks can be found to result from mistakes in judgement and/or awareness. Neither mortal fear, nor a complacently cavalier attitude will serve you well in situations (like much of Alaska) which can get you killed. Respect works well.

that also applies to my AO. i'd bet most of the DLP shootings here happen merely because the bear wandered within gunshot range, not because the bear was threatening.

it may sound cool to say 'i'll just blast 'em with my hawgleg' but i carry bear spray, and i've used it. it works. if i carry a gun and what gun i carry is a random thing.

Bears are curious and the young ones ( like humans) have not learned what to fear or respect. I have literally had young bears walk to within 10 feet or less of me. Actually I had a cub of the year brush my leg as he was walking behind me, as MOM was 30 feet in front of me eating a fish. Just because a bear is close does not mean it is a threat. Just like a strange dog or bull, you need to be able to read their body language.
I have used bear spray on some younger bears in order to teach them a lesson about people and their response was immediate. they backed away, rubbing their eyes and nose and left the area. Like always I had a gun present but using the spray not only saved the bear but also saved me from a lot of paperwork and having to skin another bear.

they are also watching and reacting to our body language.

the ranch where i grew up was near an area where some govt. agency dumped problem bears (mostly blackies), so in the fall whan the cholkcherrys were ripe, we'd get an influx of them. we could rehab about half to 2/3 of the stupid ones with non lethal methods.

many thanks to all. at the time i new no one to borrow a hogleg from and traveled the bear trails along the Kenai with only the spray. i was lately wondering how safe i was.

Interesting read. Have made two trips up to Ak for Mountain Goats. The guide and I have become good friends and stay in touch.

He has guided more than a few Brown Bears hunters successfully and in his line of work has not only killed them on his own, but backed up his hunters. He is adamant that he will only do so if the situation warrants.

Lives in Cordova and spends considerable time outdoors in Bear country. For years he would try to find and interact with them-while carrying-for the sole purpose of furthering his education. He agrees with many here with experience that most charges are bluffs, and some of them have ended at close enough range to raise the hair on my arms just from the telling. From experience he said that you will pretty much know right off wither it is the real thing or a bluff. Ears back and head down were two of the things he mentioned. He also implied the intensity of the charge is something one leans to recognize. Full steam head-on was another thing he mentioned. His experience has told him that if they are showing you some body a bluff is more likely.

However he also said that as he gets older, and he is still not 30, he is becoming less tolerant of letting them get away with playing games with him.

The one time we went fishing "back-in" to get away from the crowded streams, he carried a S&W .500. We had to go thru some thick stuff to get there. Much of it inside "tunnels" thru the alders. I think the Ak guys will know what I mean by that.

FWIW

458 Win,



That's one of my favorite quotes......by Phil Shoemaker.

I stumbled across this thread looking for something else. You know Google. Anyway I thought I would put my two cents in for what it's worth. A very long two cents as it turns out!
First off I would like to state that I am no expert but I have worked in Alaska for 39 years, played there too. I have shot a number of bears but never in self defense.
I will briefly address a few points that have been brought up.

Calibers:
The clever little saying by Shoemaker about the 30-06 is nice but misleading. Hell, it is more than misleading, it is out and out wrong when speaking of a stopping rifle and that is what we're talking about here. Yes, 30-06 is one of my favorite calibers and is capable of taking down anything in North America in a hunting situation. I have even seen it used successfully on cape buffalo in Africa (illegal of course but laws are sometimes just suggestions in Africa). However there is a huge difference between a rifle for hunting and a rifle for stopping. The 30-06 is in no way an ideal stopper for a charging Peninsula brown bear. It is the bare minimum and the minimum is rarely ideal. Really the .375 H&H or the hot loaded 45-70 with hard cast bullets is the minimum. Me? Well it depends. For the camp gun on the Peninsula I like having my M70 .458 Win. Mag. loaded with 500 grain Barnes solids at over 2200 fps. This gun and load has dropped several cape buffalo and one elephant, all with one shot. I have confidence in it and that counts- a lot.

I really think bears, like dogs, can sense you have the upper hand. A bear, like a vicious dog, is not going to push it if he senses you are not afraid and a person that knows how to use a stopper rifle is not going to be afraid. I have chased bears off of our caribou where the trees were not high enough to keep the meat out of their reach. I just would walk in with the .458 and some stern words and a "damn you bears" attitude and they would scatter.

However I do not recommend the .458 for everyone. The first time I shot mine I thought the thing had blown up or something. Really, I looked at my fingers to see if they were still there! I couldn't believe the recoil and I had shot a lot of so called heavy calibers. It took me months of shooting day after day a few rounds per day to become proficient with it. Most hunters can handle a .375, the recoil on a well proportioned .375 is not any worse than shooting turkey rounds out of most shotguns. I think most people cannot handle a .458 well and it kind of pisses me off that these gun writers make people think that even a .458 is not enough to kill a cape buffalo and that they need a .458 Lott, with 10% more velocity and 20% more recoil. Crazy. Animals have not gotten tougher of the years and the old .450 NE was considered the ne plus ultra stopper cartridge. The .458 Win. can duplicate those ballistics and then some with far better bullets than were available in the early 20th century. Gun writers just need something to write about and to push people into thinking they need something they don't.
Of course dragging around a .458 or any rifle at times is not practical. I have an old Model 29 that I bought in the 1970s and have shot so much I have had to have it rebuilt twice. It is not the best thing for bear protection but as a friend of mine love to say, "It's better than begging."

Many individuals and government agencies are switching from shotgun which are of dubious value against a large brown bear, to Marlin 1895 rifle in 45-70 with Garrett ammo. I am not sure I buy all of Garret's propaganda about how his 45-70 ammo out penetrates a faster .458 Win. but a lot of people believe it and whether it actually does or not it is enough. If I were to buy a rifle strictly for bear protection and nothing else this rifle and ammo would be high on my list.

Pepper Spray:
One should ask oneself if this pepper spray is so good then why does ADF&G, NOAA, USF&W, etc., issue firearms to their personnel in bear country? They have the general public believing that they are invulnerable with this aerosol can in their hands. I know their reasoning. It is that they do not want these untrained yahoos shooting bears for no reason. To many government people everyone is a yahoo except for them of course.

The truth about pepper spray is that is about 80% effective when used properly. That sounds OK unless you get caught on the 20% side. A firearm, on the other hand, is 100% effective when used correctly (that is you hit where you're aiming and have enough gun for the job).

Here is a little anecdotal story about bear spray. I had my little Brittany spaniel that would not get along with my girlfriends golden. The two would suddenly break out into fights, both were males of course but still neither breed are known as vicious dogs.

So I get this not so bright idea that the next time they fight I would spray them with bear spray so that in a Pavlov's dog sort of way they would associate this nasty pain with fighting. So I very stupidly had the bear spray out and ready to waiting for the next melee. It happened in the living room. So I spray the dogs. Guess what happened. They fought harder. I mean really viciously. We had to pull them apart. Remember this was indoors. Guess what happened next? The bear spray filled the room and all men, women in dogs were soon in pain running for the bathroom and water!
I learned two things from this. First never use bear spray indoors! Second if bear spray only encourages a mild mannered Brittany to fight harder, it is not going to work on an angry brown bear. Sorry I just don't believe it. It can work on a bear that is just looking for food but not one that is in a rage. Hell it doesn't even work on some criminals that are in a rage.

You have to ask yourself if bear spray is a deterrent because it is painful the recipient ( and I can testify that it burns like hell), well then isn't a .44 magnum going to hurt and hell of lot more than pepper spray? I will take my Model 29, as underpowered as it is, over pepper spray any day. If I knew that there was going to be a bear problem then of course I would want something more. But then again if I knew, well it wouldn't be any handgun but a rifle. The Model 29 suffices just because I already own it. If I were to pick something today I suppose it would be different. Maybe a Freedom Arms .454. Probably not an S&W .500 simply because that gets so heavy one may as well carry a rifle. Really the odds of having to actually use the weapon are slim. I have even thought of just going to the S&W Mountain Gun in .44 Mag. A friend of mine has one and it may not be the nicest shooting gun but it sure is light for the power.

CRF:
If you are going to buy a bolt action rifle for bear defense get a CFR model. That is all there is to it. There is not room for argument here. For shooting whitetails or whatever it doesn't matter but if the rifle is for self-defense get a CRF. There is a reason for this it. Mauser figured it out more than 100 years ago. It has nothing to do with feeding upside down, sideways or whatever these stupid gun writers say. It mostly has to do with preventing a double feed jam which can happen in a panic situation. I have seen it happen.
Take your Remington M 700 or any other push feed bolt action and load up two dummy rounds in the magazine. Start to load one round then stop after it is half way into the chamber. Now retract the bolt and push the other round in. Voila! You have a double feed jam and your rifle can be out of commission for a while depending on how hard you pushed that second round in which is probably going to very hard in a tense situation.
Yes, I know, you have had a Model 700 since ancient times and this has never happened. How many times have you been charged by a dangerous animal? It is not for fashion that African PHs pick CRF bolt actions almost exclusively when they pick a bolt action.

There was a case a few years back in BC where two elk hunter were killed by a grizzly bear. Not a shot was fired at the bear and the widows of the two men couldn't understand this since both men were experienced hunters in grizzly country and they couldn't imagine that they would have unloaded the guns while butchering an elk. An investigation by James Gary Shelton revealed that they hadn't unloaded the guns and it fact one was used, or least it was tried to be used. It was a Browning A-Bolt, very popular in BC and a push feed. It had a double feed jam. Even experienced hunters at times can get shaken up.

There was a time when getting a CRF rifle was difficult and expensive. That time has passed and there are many models available at a reasonable price.
Finally, do I think bears are all that dangerous? Well it depends on what you're comparing them to and more where you are. I get a little tired of hearing the nonsense about you're more likely to die a bee sting than by a grizzly bear. Yes, that is true if you are in New York or most of the lower 48 since there aren't any grizzly bears and bees are everywhere. It is not true if you are on the Alaska Peninsula where there are plenty of bears and few bees except those huge furry ones that look scary but I have never been stung by one of them.

So although the odds of being attacked are small it doesn't hurt to be prepared. I work in an industry that has the highest death rate of any job in America. I am a Bering Sea crab fisherman. I don't go out thinking I am going to die or even really giving the matter much thought. However we still have survival equipment and do drills. It would be crazy not to, not to mention illegal. Still I don't carry any sort of bear protection much of the time simply because it is too much trouble. You know like fastening your seat belt on a back road. I mean I am not going to carry a gun walking to the store in King Cove even though a kid was killed right in town years back. I won't get into that incident other than to say the people in King Cove are the least tolerant of bears than any other bush village I have visited in Alaska. Suffice to say there was more to the story than was printed in the press. There usually is when it comes to bear attacks and well, just about anything else for that matter.

For those that don't take bears seriously as a real danger, well they should meet someone that has survived a bear attack. Survive is the correct word. Just a few seconds with a grizzly changes your life forever. A lot of this bravado about bears not being dangerous is just that, bravado to imply they are braver than other people and/or more knowledgeable. Actually anyone that claims grizzly/brown bears are not dangerous is an idiot. That's not my opinion but a fact.
Brown bears in Alaska are much different than grizzly bears in the lower 48. For one thing they are way larger and another they have not been hunted to the degree that the southern bears have which eliminated a lot of the aggressive gene pool from the stock. Read Lewis and Clark recollections of grizzly bears. They would attack without provocation. Rifle soon eliminated that gene pool or at least thinned it out. Bears in Alaska were never hunted to the point of extirpation.

I have a friend that was a large carnivore biologist in Montana. He would insist that all the paranoia about brown bears was nonsense because he has all sorts of experience trapping and tagging grizzly bears in Montana. I did my best to tell him that bears in Alaska were different. He wouldn't believe me and basically implied that I didn't know what I was talking about. That was before he went hunting for caribou on the Alaskan Peninsula. He came back singing a different tune. He said he didn't feel safe taking a piss outside of camp without a gun.

Still if you shoot a bear in self-defense in Alaska be ready for your vacation to be ruined. You must salvage the hide and the skull neither of which you can keep. Then you must prove the shooting was justified. This is the real reason that some agencies discourage guns for bear protection. They are afraid of inexperienced people shooting a valuable resource for no reason. Let's face it, with all the stories there are people that go to Alaska with the belief that there is a bear behind every bush ready to get them. The average person cannot tell a bluff charge from the real thing. They are just about always bluff charges. So if you go up there packing make certain you really have to pull the trigger before you actually do. It used to be 17 yards and you shoot if the bear is coming at you. I don't know if that is still the case but I do know 17 yards is damn close!
Like I said at first, I am not expert and these thoughts are mostly my own based on a bit of experience.

More horseshit in a single "first post" than I can recall...

Would you take advice from someone dumb enough to use pepper spray indoors?

CRF ultimatum... GMAFB...

The inadequacy of the 30-06...

Complete and total cluelessness about how the DLP thing works... except for those that shoot bears in the ass at 50 yards and claim they were mid-charge...

And there was lots more... But it was great laugh...
art

You read the whole post?

A better man than me.....

...was thinking a lot of likewise thoughts.

For quite a while I've believed that there are two classes of ignorant/inexperienced people when it comes to bears. Either they think bears are warm, fuzzy, and just about cuddly as long as you think nice thoughts about them. The other side has the people who seem to think that every tree or alder sprout has a bear lurking behind it and that the bear's sole purpose in life is lying in wait to ambush the first human who comes along.......and the only thing suitable for retaining one's life is something akin to a half inch pipe or better chambered for something ending in "Nitro".

Most of my defensive bear shooting by a large margin has involved shooting toward bears. I would really hate to be using something trotting 500 grain bullets out at around Mach II for such duties.

Bear defense weapons also don't fall into the same category as the "crawl into the willows after a bear that the client winged with a rifle larger than their pay/ability grade" rifles that a guide might prefer.

Wow!

I keep telling you kids not to leave the cabin door open...

Bear do not need guns for protection - they are adequately equipped as is.

That said - when we shot a bear, we are hunting, but when a bear attacks us he is agressive, attacking, nuisance, savage,...

OK, y'all. Pick the best line from the Dutch boy's offering!

Here's my fave:

LMAO!!

I sure as heck don't want to carry a rifle with a barrel big enough to stamp the caliber bold enough for them to read it. You know how their eyes ain't worth a crap.

Note to self.....don't use pepper spray in doors on dogs.

I'll play...




Right about now, I'm thinking I'd not want to see an in-depth, longish, not-brief one...

I win.