After talking to Sitka Deer, of Anchorage, 5+ years back before I headed North of Nome for my grizzly hunt, he convinced me that a grizzly is pretty lightly boned. He's been in on numerous kills and told me how he skinned out a Brownie's scapula and that is was nearly paper thin to a point he could see the shadow of his hand through it when held up to light.
Alan
I have a collection of bones acquired over the years. I am primarily interested in the size and shape of the humerus (upper arm, or in this case, the front leg) and scapula (shoulder blade) from various animals.
As noted above, even a brown bear scapula at its thinnest will allow some light though. The scapula is not the problem.
The humerus below the scapula however is a very heavy bone, and the extremely heavy ball at the end of the humerus that joins with the scapula is likely the most difficult resistance that a bullet might encounter. Consider that your choice of shots is not likely to be optimum under the conditions of a fast incoming blur of brown.
This head of the humerus is the size of large man's fist and is a thick and heavy bone. The humerus of a mature brown bear is perhaps a bit less heavy than that of a three year old bison. It is definitely heavier than that of a mature bull elk.
That is the bone to consider when wondering about Berger VLD bullets, and choice of cartridge perhaps. A grizzly humerus would probably be somewhat lighter than that of a brown bear, but I doubt it would likely be called light-boned by most people.
I would not trust a fast expanding bullet to defeat that heavy ball of the humerus and still have the mass and momentum to destroy vital organs and quickly kill a large animal.
I do not know about the Berger VLD as I have never used one. But I can tell you this for a fact. A 250 grain Swift A-Frame will completely destroy the head of the humerus of an adult bull elk at 13 yards when fired from a .338 Win Mag,, and will continue on to kill the elk.
That is not too much different from what might happen with an incoming grizzly and that is why I personally carry that load when hunting elk among the grizzlies.
Best of luck with your choices OP. I like that thought of the .338-06.
