Originally Posted by ElkSlayer91
Originally Posted by BayouRover
As for a personal weapon in bear country, a long barrel like a 7.5" one on a Super Blackhawk is not your best friend when things go bad. A much shorter barrel such as a 4 3/4" Super Blackhawk in 44 Mag or a 4" barreled Redhawk in 45 Colt will be a lot handier when things are quickly going sideways. You won't need a longer site radius at that point as it will probably be point and shoot range at best, and clearing a long barrel from a holster might not happen as quickly. Those words paraphrase what my guide told me in prepartation for the hunt.
That was your guide's standard speech for all clients, especially geared towards city slickers, who think they are gun savvy.

It does not apply to someone who has handled wheel guns their whole life, and is very proficient with them.

You yourself went on to state you pulled out your gun when the bear was still at a distance. What makes you think a 3.5 inch longer barrel would matter when you have pulled out the gun, when the bear is 30-50 yards away?


Apparently a couple of things that I said didn't deter you from jumping to your own conclusions. As for me being a city slicker at the time, I had never lived anywhere that had more than one Walmart at that point in my life. In addition, apparently the guide I used was a city slicker also as he carried a Smith 4" 629.

Unlike this scenario, we were in open country and we actually had several minutes to get our act together at the kill site as we saw the bear coming at a fast lope from maybe a half mile away. I did as the guide asked me to do while watching the bear approach while he scoured the area behind us. At about 100 yards he began shouting and waving his arms, one of which had a pump shotgun attached to it in his hand. He had ordered me to stand to his left at that time looking in the opposite direction of the bear in case there were bears on both sides of us. He told me in case he fired to turn to my left around him and to start opening up with my handgun.

Fortunately that was never needed as the bear turned tail at what the guide said was about 30 yards. Whether it was all handled according to the book, I'll never know. But at the time it worked. After the bear turned a 180, he handed me his shotgun and quickly began gutting the caribou. From that point on no more bears were seen and all went well from there.

Btw - I apologise.....I didn't realize that I was talking with Matt Dillon when I made the comments about short barreled handguns... my bad. It never came up in conversations, but I'm betting that my guide would have suggested that even Matt should leave his cavalry model 45 at home and to bring something with a shorter barrel. Maybe not....

It's official. I missed the selfie deadline so I'm Maser's sock puppet because rene and the Polish half of the fubar twins have decided that I am.

ΜOΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ μολὼν λαβέ