Home Forums Reloading Handgun Reloading 357 Magnum - Reccomend a black bear defense load

I've got you by 2 years, and for 50+ years every black bear that I encountered turned tail and ran away as soon as they saw me. So did a couple of grizzlies. The abut 15 years ago one of our Forest Service trail crews was clearing a trail and the lead worker was attacked by a black bear. After the initial attack he climbed higher up a tall fir tree than I thought was possible. Then every time he yelled for help, the bear climbed up the tree and bit his feet and legs.

I was in the area and heard of the attack on my radio. I met our FS LEO and a Deputy Sheriff at the trailhead. The LEO gave me his AR-15 and the three of us went up the trail. We got to the tree where the attacked trail worked had climbed at least an hour after the initial attack, and the bear immediately charged us. The three of us shot almost in unison and killed the bear. When we checked the bear we saw that it was a female.

We then got the injured worker out of the tree and other help arrived, including a helicopter from Yellowstone NP. I then noticed a little black cub of the year running through the brush and up a tree. I immediately realized that the crew member had worked between the mother bear and her cubs. She hadn't left the area probably because she couldn't gather up her cubs.

I thought that with the mother dead, someone would say the cub wouldn't survive and want to shoot it, so I climbed up the tree with it and drug it out. He was only a few months old, but he had very sharp teeth and claws. I had a tight two hand hold on him for over an hour until the FWP bear biologist arrived with a 5 gallon plastic bucket that he could carry him out in. The next day FWP went back there with dogs and found another cub. They took the two cubs to a wildlife rehab center in Helena, and released the cubs back in the woods two years later.

So back to the OP's question on a .357 magnum load for black bear defense, when I carried a .357 in bear country, I had it full of 158 grain hard cast gas checked SWC bullets over a full charge of 2400. Most of the time when I carried a bear defense pistol it was either my 1911 .45 acp or one of my .44 magnums. I have killed two black bear with those pistols (not in defense) using my home cast bullets. Both were one shot kills and neither bear ran over 10 yards after I shot them.