Here is an interesting article that has some good real world research.
Documents 104 individual cases of handguns being used for defense against bears.
Handguns against bearsThe claim was made in good faith. There was no response. I and colleagues started searching for cases where the use of pistols, as a defense against bears, was not successful. They were very difficult to find. There was a large amount of fantasy, myth, and conjecture, but little-documented fact.
Sixteen months later, in 2018, I published the first of this series. We found one failure out of 37 documented cases. That translated to a 97% success rate. Three years later, we have found two more failures, out of 104 documented cases. The success rate remains at 97%.
Problems of access to defensive tools against bears are similar to pistols or handguns, long guns, edged weapons, bear spray, or air horns.
Only cases where the pistol was actually fired are included. If the study were about bear spray, only cases where bear spray was actually sprayed would be included.
We include every case where a pistol was fired in a defensive action against a bear, which we can document. We look for names, dates, and locations. The provenance of the information is included in each case. Most cases have links to Internet sources. Some are referenced to books or other print publications. A few are from direct interviews of the people involved.
I think the G20 makes a lot of sense for general defense against bears. Bear hunting I would and have used .45 Long Colt/350gr WLN.
