Originally Posted by jwp475
Originally Posted by 458Win
As I said, this only happened a few days ago and the clients have left and I still have to turn the hide, skull and paperwork over to F&G in King Salmon this week. Like any shooting incident, it will take a little time for all involved to process and is not something to seek notoriety for. But it can be used as a learning experience and I have yet to decided how much and where I want to share it.
It is a coincidence that this forum topic, , my recent testing of 9mm and 357 Buffalo Bore ammo and then this incident came about at the same time.

The quick takeaway is to use common sense, listen to advice gained by experience, and take time to become comfortable and confident with your weapon of choice.

Tim Sundles, the owner of Buffalo Bore ammo, designed ammo for the "lessor" handgun calibers specifically for people who didn't want to expend the money and time to gain profeciency with large caliber handguns but still wanted something that gave them a resonable chance of surviving highly unlikely encounters like this with a handgun that they already own and are familiar with.

I had originally offered my article of my testing with the ammo to Lee Hoots, the editor at Wolfe Publishing, but he says he is not interested as there is not sufficient interest in the subject. I will eventually explore the possibility of working with AK F&G or somewhere where the topic is relevent.

Oh, and as much as I appreciated the light weight of the little 9mm, it's larger magazine capacity and ability to rapidly make multiple hits, I am not yet ready to give up either my S&W M-65 357 or my S&W 44 Mtn Gun ! And the jury is still out on whether a pistol like my son's Hamilton Bowen 475 Linebaugh would have been an asset or a detriment as complete pass throughs could have endangered others. Plus I was able to achieve 3 hits with the 9mm, each eliciting a response from the bear, by the time it would have taken me to recover and shoot a second shot from the SA Linebaugh.


I shot a grizzly on the Kelly River in 1988 with a 475 Linebaugh that came in on me while cleaning a moose. I was shooting a LBT 390 grain LFN that I cast out of wheel weights and water quenched. My friend hit the bear first with a 250 partition out of a 338 win. The bear went down and imediatley got up up as if spring loaded. From my angle I hit the bear in the back of the rib cage angling toward the off shoulder. At the shot the bear went straight down with a four legs straight out and never got up again. This was the first bear and moose ever shot with the 475 Linebaugh. I was impressed with the performance of these big bore revolvers then and now when loaded and shot properly.

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Great job under pressure ,Phil!


The right shaped hard cast bullet with proper meplat even at moderate velocities is indeed a stellar killer, good shooting to you both JWP and Phil!

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