Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Do you carry a sidearm while hunting with your rifle?

LOL, not even my wife puts her pistol on at night to step a few steps out of the tent to pee. Might regret that one day but we are not top of the food chain in some areas and that has to be accepted IMHO

Same conclusion my wife came to with the 10mm.

Even though we have a 329PD thats a joy to carry, its a bear, pardon the pun, on the 2nd and further shots with heavy ammo. Was reading up some more on Elmer though, maybe we needed to keep heavy hard bullets but back the power factor down some on the 44. But 16 rounds of 10mm ain't to sneeze at. And she blew some good sized holes in an abandoned target toyotas chrome bumper one evening practicing...

This is a bit off topic but also regarding pistols for back up carry, I went with a Glock 10mm as a compromise but I still think in worst case scenario a double action would be the most dependable pistol to carry. If say in Alaska you are jumped by a bear and on the ground could you cock a single action? Of course if jumped your pistol may have flown from your hand anyway.

the flying from hand is a consideration and one reason looking into some form of lanyard setup for Carolyn.

LOL yeah I don't do it very often down here, but sometimes do. When I was in Alaska we were in an area that held a lot of Grizzlies. For some reason the guy I was with insisted on camping next to thick willows where he saw several bears in the past. We never saw one, but you never know.

There was a bowhunter attacked this year by a griz. The only thing he had to harm the bear was shoving his hand down the bears throat. It worked surprisingly.

Carried one every day for the last 21 years, and it comes off the belt at bed time, to rest on the nightstand. See no reason to leave it at home just because I'm hunting. I did kill a doe with it once when a rifle schitt the bed on me. She hung out at 15 yards watching me fiddle with the rifle, so I pulled the Glock and shot her in the head. Problem solved.

The guide in AK had one with all the time during this past moose hunt. We saw sows with cubs and lone bear every day. After the kill we had bear nearby, also in our incoming boot prints and had one false charge. That was pretty exciting - no Go Pro though.
So the old Taurus lightweight 44 was with us everywhere and on top of the pack when we were at the kill site.

In New Mexico I had two bouts with pushy bear. One at the elk kill site the morning after - stole a backstrap and covered the carcass with grass and sticks - yes I have photos. It was a brown phase blackie I had to scare off that morning.
Later that night one was in camp snooping around due to the fresh scent of elk.

Hunters in camp after me had a bear come in and steal their bull cape. But they were from TX and didn't know any better than to leave it hanging on a tree.

Suspenders work very well and my "German Wool Pants" from Cabelas have buttons for proper suspenders, not those crappy clip-ons. For other pants, I have a pair of Dickies braces that clip under the belt and don't damage the waistband. They occasionally slip off, though and the sliders slip after a while.

A Tanker holster for the L frame is on my long list of stuff to get someday when I stop buying so many guns. I would need a pretty large harness if I wanted it to go over my hunting coat. We can, with a CCW permit, carry concealed while hunting or fishing on State land and carry a legal hunting handgun openly with a Small Arms stamp on a hunting license. Like most places, the handgun has to either be concealed or clearly visible, not somewhere in the middle.

I once talked to a guy who had got attacked by a black bear on an early season "scouting" trip for elk in Colorado.

Although he had a rifle, he surprised the bear (turned out to be a sow later on) when coming around a bend and the bear was upon him so fast, he said he didn't even have time to even think about getting the rifle up for a shot (he was carrying it - port arms).

The bear chewed on him a bit, and he managed to break free and started climbing a tree. The bear came right up after him and grabbed him by his calf. Kicking the bear with his other foot, the bear lost her grip on the tree and fell, taking a big chunk of his calf with him.

He watched the bear move off, with a piece of his leg dangling from her jaws.

After a bit, he climbed down, recovered his rifle, and crawled back to his tent. It was starting to get dark and he didn't want to make a long crawl (about 3 miles) down the rocky trail in the dark.

He bandaged his calf, best he could and waited for the bear to return.

Sure enough, about 1 or 2 am, the bear tried to paw its way through the tent. The guy fired his rifle and the bear left.

At daybreak, the guy started crawling down the trail. This is a trail I have hunted that (Major Creek) in south-central Colorado, that follows a creek. It is muddy and rocky with dense brush on both sides.

About 9:30 am, he finally makes it far enough down the trail to a point where a woman having coffee on her porch (thankfully facing the mountains) see him, and has some ranch hands get him. He is taken to the hospital.

The (then) Co Division of Wildlife, is there within an couple of hours with hounds. They find the bears tracks just 200 feet up the trail the man had just crawled down. The bear was trailing him to finish him off!

They shot the bear and found the remains of the man's calf in her stomach.

The man moved away for almost 10 years and, when I met him, had just started hunting again in Colorado, where he grew up and had hunted for over 25 years.

He told me (and I was bear hunting at the time) that he will only go back into bear country under the following conditions:

1) always have a pistol strapped securely to your body. A rifle is almost useless if the bear surprises you at close range. You will not get a shot. Your best chance will be once the bear knocks you down, and provided your pistol doesn't go flying, you can grab the gun and kill the bear while it is chewing on you.

2)always hunt with another person.

Now this if from a guy who grew up in the Colorado mountains and hunted deer, elk, and bear his entire life. He hunted for decades by himself and was an accomplished outdoorsman, yet one encounter changed his views.


As for me, I always take a pistol along (currently a Taurus Tracker .44 Mag) if I am in bear country, and if I am seeing fresh bear scat, I take it with me when I'm hunting. I still like to hunt alone though.

BTW I used to have a SW 629 in .44 mag, but it was really too heavy, so I sold it. The Taurus Tracker is a real kicker, but is a joy to carry.


Good hunting!

BH

Lately I carry a Glock 20 10 MM with 220 Gr Buffalo Boar bullets. I figure one might not kill but I have 14 of his friends. Reliable and much easier to shoot with control than my model 29 S&W 44 mag with 300 gr cast loads. Boating or 4 wheeling I have it with me and in the tent.

I think the same way. If shot placement means anything, I'm better off with my glock 29 than a revolver.