In the Oct. issue of NRA Hunter, there is a story of an AK woman shooting a nice grizzly with a .308. The story starts on page 106. She buys a SummitLite rifle from Wild Wild West, gets quite a bit of training and uses Lake Clark Air for a jump into camp. She eventually gets into a position for a bear and uses a 165gr Hornady load to shoot the bear at 50 yards. A second shot dropped him she says. Isn't clear if the guide also shot or not.
Anyway just wondering what you thought of the .308 for grizzlies.
I think that Hornady load is their Light Magnum? I don't know what the 165gr bullet would be. She also takes a caribou a few days later with the same rifle.
So, what are your thoughts out there?

Not that unusual...

Location, Location, Location...

Yep..Hitting any critter RIGHT with even a 6,5x55 or .308 will take it down...including elephants..

Don't think I would deliberately choose the .308 or other smaller calibers for stopping an angry chargeing Brownie or Griz tho...even IF reportedly NA hunters in dire straits and mountain men killed attacking Griz with a good long knife or short spear and a will to survive.Jim

Cindy Rhodes killed one of the biggest Kodiak bears of all time in full charge with a 7x57 at very close range...

I am fairly convinced that the primary reason some shooters fail to stop charging game with allegedly "inadequate" rifles has more to do with shot placement under stress than it does with the cartridge choice.

Fifty or 100 years ago very few in Alaska would have considered the .308 to be inadequate for grizzly bears -- because the '06 was the standard and the .308 replicates '06 performance of half a decade ago.

Many would be surprised to know what some who live among bears on a daily basis might consider to be "adequate" rifles .

Doesn't the bear killed in mid-charge with a 7mm mauser ring a "Bell" with anyone?

I'm drawing a solid connection...got a memory like an elephant, I do...

I remeber talking to an old native guy on the Kodiak dock. he went on about some guys walking by in full camo, obviously heading to a boat to go hunting. His big complaint was the guns they were probably shooting. Said he remembered when the 30-06 was considered a huge rifle and the 30-30 was the standard...

When my brother bought a .300 Savage in about 1967 or so, it was looked upon, in rural Missouri, as a heavy-duty big game rifle -- the sort of gun you bought to shoot moose and bears, not just deer.

100 years ago the .30-30 was advertised as a high-velocity round...

location, location, location is correct Art!

In ne Arkansas my 7 mag was considered a big gun by the guys I was deer hunting with, guess I'd have fit in better with my old .30-.30, but I had my first left handed bolt and I was going to use it.

brung it to Alaska only to have no shortage of folks tell me it was too small to hunt bears or moose with, (lol)

While not my first choice to go looking for trouble with I've gone full circle, my truck gun is a .30-.30 if I need to go into the woods with it I figure I'm still pretty near the top of the food chain.

I'm more comfortable with it than I was when I toted a Ruger Redhawwk in .44 mag and it just handles better than the sixgun.

Like I said in another post yesterday, it's all about the placement. I also mentioned that I know somebody that killed a Brownie with one shot from a .22 mag. A .308 isn't isnt to redicules, especially if you got a buide backing you up, witch sounds like the case in this one? I personally like to have a little bigger gun when hunting Brownies.

I dated a gal from AK some years ago whose father shot a Brown with his 30-06. I doubt that he considered it inadequate for the job at hand.
They were from Cordova. He ran a fishing charter service when he returned from WW II.
I got some great Halibut dinners out of the deal...

Don

maybe Karamajo<sp> Bell hunting-killing elephants in Africa..
As I recalled he used the 6,5x55 too..Jim

When I was a Kid 30 years ago, The stories I read and reread in Outdoor Life considered a 300 wm with silvertip.. good brown bear medicine. 300wm/silvertips or 308/TSX that would be a tough choice.

Probably more brown bears taken with an '06 than any other cartridge.

My experience was like MD, the old guys I knew who were elk hunters considered the .300 Savage to be the top of the heap of elk rifles.

A 308 win will certainly take a Brown Bear,Moose are more difficult to penetrate....Shot location is the key.....

Funny how when shot where it counts, it doesn't take much to kill and animal, and when shot where it doesn't, there is nothing shoulder fired that'll make up the difference.

I believe Don killed a bear with a 308...............

I agree with all the sage advice already posted. But I just find it so interesting that young shooters and most women continually carry and shoot calibers WE would turn up our noses at! We've had this conversation many times before, eg. location, location, location plus premium bullets spell success for youngsters and women. On very large and potentially dangerous game.
Conversely we have hundreds of threads here that strongly recommend large "magnum" calibers for elk, grizzlies, brown bear and lesser big game.
Did big game animals take steroids or did the firearm makers and writers excel in marketing?

Actually I thought Don scolded it into submission after wayward parents let their children enter the same zip code with the bear.

Some fella that doesn't post here much at all anymore used to say something to the effect of

placement, boolit, caliber.

Nope, no 6.5x55. Walter Dalrymple Maitland (Karamojo) Bell started his ivory-hunting career with a .303 British. Later he adopted both the .275 Rigby (7x57 Mauser) and the 6.5x54 Mannlicher-Schoenauer as elephant-shooting tools, after he sectioned several elephant skulls and precisely determined brain location. He used only round-nose solid bullets and depended on accurate shot placement and penetration.

Two factors that are equally important today .

I visited the wildlife museum in Anchor Point a few years ago; it has all kinds of big game from around the world. I asked the hunter's wife what he used to shoot the hippo. She smiled and said "He only uses one gun to hunt with, an 03 model in .30/06."

That guy in Africa killed 800+ elephants with a 7x57. They are loading the .45-70 now that shoots through two cape buffalos. One of my friends in highschool dropped a large buck like a rock by shooting it in the back of the head with a .22LR or maybe a .22Short as he was coon hunting. Huge numbers of polar bears were taken with 7.62Russian, 7x57, and .303British. What's not to believe about a .308 taking a big grizzly bear.

George

This is just a guess, but there's a chance he shoots that old Springfield pretty well.

He was out of town that day, his wife was running the museum collecting the few dollar entry fee and interacting with the people. It was a nice way to spend a few hours. Some of the taxidermy work is pretty old but the overall collection is really wonderful. If anyone ever gets to AP, try to stop in there.

At the end of the Nabesna Road the Ellis family has a trophy room they always used to let folks wander through... If they still do it is worth the time...

I am still impressed with the 30" plus brownie at the B concourse in ANC. What a lunker!

That's usually "fly over" country, but I need to stop sometime.