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So is .357 mag. enough gun for black bears in the eastern woods? Sorry to sound ignorant, it's just that I am.

They can do quite a bit of damage, more than just run away like a deer. A couple of the bigger bears just flat out refused to accept the fact they were dead and went balls to the wall up until they hit the dirt.

I agree and disagree with pretty much everything said. Black bears aren't hard to kill. But like said above the ones that have a few seconds left can do some serious damage. A bad shot placement is a bad shot placement no matter the weapon. I would rather a guy have a weapon they can handle well and make a good shot with versus a guy with a gun to powerful or a bow with to much draw weight and can't make a good shot because of. So with that said I wouldn't have a problem with a guy hunting a black bear with a .357 provided he can shoot it well.

JJHACK Offline
Campfire Tracker

Registered: 01/30/01
Posts: 6141
Loc: Touchet Wa. & Ellisras South ...
When I was working in the bear research and damage prevention program for the Weyerhaeuser Corporation and the Washington Fish and Wildlife Department in Western Washington, I had about 60 feeding stations to maintain on approximately 380 thousand acres bordering the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in the Cascades of Washington state. The reason we had feeding stations for black bears is another story altogether. I will just say for now that we were doing work on tree damage prevention by offering a supplemental food source for part of each spring when natural foods were limited.

I would make three trips each week maintaining approximately 20 stations per trip. One day while making the rounds of feed stations my daughter who was about 5 years old fell and cut her knee pretty bad. She was stressed out and nothing I could do would pacify her desire to go home. I found some candy bars in the truck, and gave her some soda. The sugar rush helped for the time being and I really needed to get through the remaining stations so I would not screw up my schedule for the next set of feeding stations.

I did not want to drive all the way out of the woods and have to come all the way back to finish. My daughter was a good sport working with me, as it was all she really knew in her life. We were out working with the bears almost every day together. I would just strap her into the car seat and pack a lunch and away we would go for the whole day.

Because she was hurt and sore I knew she wanted to go home, she always wanted to visit the feeding stations to look at the claw marks on the trees and look for bear tracks in the mud. She was learning to be quite the little tracker and outdoorsmen. Today was much different because of her injured knee, she did not want to go out of the truck. There were some really steep or brushy stations that were dangerous or too difficult for her so she would sit in the truck and watch the road for bears. The deal was if she saw a bear to beep the horn in the truck so I knew there was a bear nearby. This actually happened several times but was not a normal occurrence.

Because of her knee injury I was really hurrying to get done and trying to finish before her sugar rush wore off. We had about 4 stations to go when she started with the �I want to go home now� suggestions. She really had no choice in the matter but I certainly did not want her to hate doing this with me, so I agreed to hurry through the last 4 stations if she would help me. I even reminded her that feeding station number 1 was her favorite because we often saw bears there. Especially the one-eared bear that she thought was really funny looking. I never let her out of the truck at station #1 because the bears there were everyplace and the one-eared bear had been getting more and more bold each week through the spring and summer.


When we arrived at the last station I reminded her about using the horn and �keeping an eye on the road�. I grabbed a 50 pound sack of specially formulated �Land O lakes� bear chow and headed into the woods about 50 yards to fill the feeding station. It was really rainy, typical of this time of year. The trail in was very slippery in several places and because I was in a hurry I almost fell a couple times. I opened up the feeder and poured the bag in, not nearly enough to fill the drum. I reset the motion sensing game counter, exchanged the film in the motion activated camera and ran out to the truck for another sack of feed. I told her I would be right back and ran up the hill to the feeder to put in this final bag.

With my mind on getting home to fire up the wood stove and making something for dinner I was coming around a steep and slippery section of the path when I was hit so hard from behind I lost all my breath. I actually heard something but with the bag over my shoulder I never saw what happened. The bag flies into the air landing right next to my head. At that exact instant I realized a bear was on my back and I was suffocating with the air knocked out of me and the weight of this bear was on top of me. I am now, and was then a pretty fit guy, but working to get out from under this bear was pointless. He had me down and there was nothing I was going to do. He was biting me in the back around the shoulders and neck. One paw was on my head and pushing it down into the mud. I was still struggling to breathe and decided I needed to somehow get my Ruger Revolver out and resolve the problem.

I could not move a muscle without getting bit again and again. My thoughts turned to my daughter who would certainly come looking for me and would also be attacked and killed for sure. Even if the bear left me what would I look like when she found my body? What panic would set in for her? What would a very young child do with a dismembered parent alone in the woods? These hundreds of thoughts go through your mind like the bullet train, one whizzing thru after another. That was probably the single scariest moment of my life.

I was terrified she would come looking for me, I needed to do something but was completely helpless to get up. This was really a horrifying situation. Then as quick as I was knocked down the bear jumped off and ran into the bush, I briefly caught a glimpse that he had only one ear. I was in shock for several seconds sitting up and trying to get my wind back. I felt like taking out the revolver and throwing it as far as I could. What a worthless piece of dead weight I had been lugging through the woods for many years. The one time I really needed it, I can�t use it! Then I heard the horn of the truck blowing and my daughter yelling out the window that the bear with one ear was in the road. �Hurry up papa, he is leaving.� I am not an exceptionally religious guy, I certainly believe in God but am not a frequent church going person. I guarantee you this, no one is an atheist when a bear attack is occurring!

I eventually got to my feet and filled the feeding station. I went back to the truck trying to clean off my face and hair with my shirt. I was really choked up, knowing how close I was to losing my daughter and my own life, it was difficult to remain calm and un-emotional about what just happened. When I arrived at the truck my daughter stated sharply, �What took you so long, you missed the one eared bear, he was standing in the road, didn�t you hear me beeping the horn? --- What happened to you? How come you�re so muddy, what happened to your face? Are you okay, what happened to your shirt?

She was like some kind of semi-automatic question machine, those of you with children can probably relate. I explained what took place and that I was okay and we could go home now. Of course at this point she wanted to stay and go shoot the bear. Going home and allowing the bear to run free was just unacceptable to her. We did however go home. As it turned out I had massive bruising on my back and neck; many of the bruises on my head and neck look like shoestring licorice in purple. I had many long purple blood blister type marks from the claws. The claws did not break the skin. My heavy blanket lined Carhart jacket has holes in the back from the bites. I feel very strongly that it saved me from much worse injuries. There was a minimum of blood; the biggest fear was my very difficult breathing, and the injuries I would find when the adrenaline wore off and when the mud was cleaned off. At least I had no broken bones or Serious blood loss.

I told a few of my coworkers about the event, and one of my F&W contacts. He suggested I shoot or snare that bear as soon as possible. It would be a shame to lose the program we had managed and developed for this one problem animal. I took a F&W employee out several times who really wanted to shoot a bear. We eventually shot the one-eared bear. I have it shoulder mounted in my shop. He was a 2.5-year-old male that weighed 210 pounds. The most �typical� gender and age for a problem bear. They have no home range, girlfriends, food source, or dominance over any other bears. They take out the frustration they have on what ever they can. It seems that the majority of bears removed from dangerous situations are those young males trying to establish their own home area. Older dominant males don�t get too worked up about things. They are the king of the area, and usually strongly nocturnal. People simply don�t get into contact with them very frequently. The younger bears are far more active during the daylight, and often in contact with people and in places that create conflict.

Over the last 20 years I�ve done this work the average age of black bears killed in Washington state has been 2.5 years old, and male. Go figure! They are the ones hunters see most frequently during shooting hours while spot and stalk, or bait hunting, and they are the ones most likely to run up a tree when chased by hounds. They are also the ones forced into bad decisions based on hunger pains!

Watching these bears around a bait is amusing. They are clearly far more afraid of other bears then the people hunting them. I remember yelling at a 2-3 year old bear to �get lost� when my wife and I were in the tree at dark. She was a bit nervous about climbing down to walk back to the truck with that bear 30 yards away. He just looked at me and walked slowly around woofing at us. Yet on another day with a bigger bear nearby, he would wind that bear and leave a vapor trail behind in has wake.

So why did that bear hit me? Well I�m not a bear mind reader, but in the discussions with other professionals doing this kind of work and from my own experiences, I concluded that he may have felt I was taking �his food�. I�m thinking he made this contact to define his space and property. When after a few moments (seemed like a heck of a long time to me) he realized I was not another bear and bolted away. Outside of that theory, I�m not sure. One thing is for certain, nobody is walking away from a �small bear� if it wants to kill and eat or dismember you! This bear was a puny 210lbs, but with a speed and strength that no equal sized human being could possess. Not sure how many people reading this have had the wind knocked from them, but that is also a paralyzing condition which causes its own panic without the bear added into to the mix! When combined into a simultaneous event it�s life changing to be sure!
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If your tag was good for one pull of the trigger, or release of the arrow, what equipment would you choose, and how careful would you be about the shot