A good deceased friend of mine put 5 .22 slugs into a big black bears head before he found the ear hole with the 6th. Point blank. The 6th collapsed the bear, first five showed little effect.
I put a JHP slug into the ribs of a 270 pound dressed bear at point blank range. 41 Remington mag, 210 gr JHP. Never broke a rib, never got inside the rib cage.
I have been around Black Bears way too long to read the BS repeated about how easy they are to kill. There are plenty of unrecovered dead bears that someone shot with a 243, or 257. If you cannot afford a rifle of sufficient size to humanely kill a black bear, head for Walmart and be a greeter until you have the 300 bucks for a new Stevens 200, I will lend you a scope.
