Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Minimum caliber for Coastal Brown Bear...

Don’t get me wrong, I still have Marlin, Winchester, and Savage centerfire lever rifles and I shoot and hunt with all of them. I just wouldn’t grab one for a big $$ guided hunt where conditions are likely to be crap.

I know exactly what you mean. I have several, yet I still reach for bolt guns far more often, and for a variety of reasons, when it's time to get serious.

Up front, I've never hunted coastal brown bear or even been to Alaska, but what I would do, first, is talk to the guide about how you'll be hunting and what is needed. On the other hand, if you have a particular rifle you just "have" to use, something you have your heart set on, talk to the guide well in advance so he can tailor the hunt a bit to give you the best chance of success with your selection.

Tom

Exactly!

But in my experience anybody who really practices with a bolt-action can run them just as fast (or faster) that a lever-gun shot by a relative amateur. I know this partly due to taking part in a fast-shooting contest a few years ago, three shots offhand, at three targets placed at 50 yards and the next two closer. The contestants were guides, average hunters, and more than one gun writer. They could use any of a selection of rifles, which included a lever-action .450 Marlin. Many chose the lever. I won with a bolt-action I'd never shot before, in some medium-magnum cartridge I don't recall. I'd bet Phil Shoemaker would have beaten my time with his .458 "Old Ugly."

Bolt's are all I shoot, have been for a lot of years. Spent a couple years living in Alaska and the gun I carried for everything was a Rem 660 in 308 20" barrel. Loaded it with 200gr Hornady's. 165 and 180's were more accurate but I figured if needed the 200gr was a better choice for penetration. I figured super accurate was wasted up there, what was needed was hunting accuracy and more important was the bullet. That 660 with 165 and 180's was well under an inch at 100yds and just over 1 1/2" at 100yds with the 200gr bullet. Had it with me on the Portage River fishing and found a bear track the size of a dinner plate. Didn't bother me much with that rifle along. Never had a run in with an animal I needed it on so maybe I was fooling myself but I doubt anything would have done well with a well placed 200gr 30 cal bullet at a reasonable range or even closer. My son has that rifle now, has great handling qualities, important I think.

All you guys are bursting my balloon. From reading, I've thought all this time that bolt-action rifles are only fast in Africa and levers not really useful (except for maybe Teddy and Kermit), whereas in Alaska bolt rifles are slow and lever rifles are faster. Thought maybe 70% of the original Model 71s -- and maybe 90% of the newer Browning and Winchester recreations -- all went to Alaska for make-over into .450s and 500s and so forth. And reading has suggested bolt-actions are only recommended for "hunters" (not the actual guides) -- and the real guides (except for Phil, I guess) always used lever rifles.

Oh, dear. I'm having a paradigm shift! Gak! Now what am I to do??



Learn to run a bolt rifle. Hmmm... what a thought.

OK, so I quoted John for a reason. I can run a smaller-cartridge lever rifle (.44-40 or .44 RM) about 5 times faster than a short-action bolt. That's an educated guess, without benefit of timer, but it's also based on about 25-30-years of CAS competition... where I have actually (but rarely) won some matches from time to time.

(That same competition does indeed highlight some lever-action weaknesses, but usually only over time, and after high round counts. I dunno how many thousands of rounds I've put through a Marlin 1894. I have fewer rounds through the Win 73 repro, no faults discovered yet... but that's with maybe only a thousand rounds or slightly less.)

But then all that said... I haven't tried seriously timing myself with the levers I've usually used for hunting, a .308 BLR 81 in Germany (a little clunky) and a .300 Savage M99 (less so, I think) here in the States. Using dummies with the M99 and with a Rem 700 Ti, and just guessing at whether each shot would have hit the (single) target, it feels like probably 3 times faster... and the M71 seems smoother than both of those others. That "test" (such as it is) also doesn't take recoil into account. (And the smaller competition rifles don't hardly recoil at all.)

And it feels like the .260 bolt is gonna hit me in the eye. I need to get over that.

I'll drag out the M70 and see how that goes...

Luckily I'm not at all serious about the idea of actually shooting a bear if I don't have to. And where we are, the turtles are much more common, anyway... no need for big guns on them!

-Chris

I suspect anyone with your round count and a CAS win or two could figure out a bolt.

Yeah... true. Probably just needs practice, more practice, and even more practice. Ah, well...

BTW, while examining my "inner hunter" (?) over these last cople weeks or so I notice I wouldn't have thought to take a lever rifle to Africa if I wanted to go there. I know it's not unheard of, not just for TR and Kermit, but also for Turnbull I think and even several folks here on the Fire... but I think I just gravitate more in the direction of writers in the vein of Finn Aagaard et al and bolt rifles when I think of Africa.

I think I'm weird.

-Chris

On an expensive, guided coastal brown bear hunt, and want to make the guide happy? Bring a medium bore you can shoot well. Because of ammo availability, I’d lean toward the .375 H&H or Ruger. It’s what I used on my grizzly this spring. Can you handle a .338 Win Mag? Bring it. Next would be .35 Whelen or 30-06 (which is my all purpose rifle). My evolving thoughts on the best cartridge for Alaska May be turning to the .35 Whelen. Your guide would probably be disappointed with the 30-06.

You need a solid scope, perhaps with detachable mounts, and back up iron sights - just like my Model 70, 1.75-6 Leupold, Talley mounts, and pop-up peep rear sight w/fiber optic front sight.

The ammo was Hornady 250 gr. GMX. One shot at 125 yds.

Congrats! Beauty.

The old gun fighter's axiom that "speed is fine, but accuracy is final" is also applicable to bear hunting.
I would be perfectly happy to have a hunter show up with a Ruger No 1 in 30-06 that he, or she, was comfortable with.

A pop up peep you say? Brockman's? How'd you get it to work with a variable?

I can tell you from experience that Marlin lever guns will freeze badly if you are in damp/soggy freezing weather for extended periods. The hammer will refuse to stay back, among other issues. This was not from rust--this was from snow and ice working their way into the action and freezing. If you have a wall tent and a wood stove and you can thaw the gun every night, this shouldn't be a problem though.

One other thing about your CAS rifles. I could run my short-stroke Uberti and Marlin 94 many times faster than even my tuned and slicked up 1895. I had worries about short stroking my 1895 because the throw was so long (and also longer than what I was used to). The throw was so long it really wasn't much faster than a bolt action. This might not be the case with your Winchester, though.

Once you shoot a bolt action enough you'll probably notice that you do a lot of the bolt manipulation under recoil anyway. So you are not actually losing that much productive shooting time. Again difference between CAS rounds and even a warm 30-06 load.

Final note about running a bolt action quickly. If a stock is even slightly too long for you and you have to reach at all for the bolt, the bolt manipulation will be several times slower. You can test this by removing your recoil pad and temporarily shortening your LOP and running the bolt that way.

Apparently very few members have read the entire thread, which contains a lot of useful info from some people who have actually seen a bunch of "coastal brown bears" killed (and have killed a few charging bears).

Always love this schidt, since it goes on and on and on....

As a result am going to suggest a .600 Nitro-Express double rifle as the absolute minimum for STOPPING a "coastal brown bear," no matter where it's hit. Which is obviously BS.

A bear may be dead but when his his adrenaline starts flowing the [bleep] hits the fan. Had a client kill one. We were standing around celebrating shooting the [bleep]. About 10 minutes later the mf comes alive and charges. Believe what you wish, I was there, some of them are just tough sob once their adrenaline starts flowing. They just don’t know they’re dead. Ain’t no such thing as too much gun. Keep shooting and shoot again. If your scared stay home. 😜

I've enjoyed this thread! Thanks all.

In grizzly camp, Brooks Range, the two guides had recently returned from Kodiak, guiding for the big bears. One had a battered Rem 700 in 375 H&H, with 260 gr Nosler Accubonds. The other a Sako, 338 Win mag with 225 gr Barnes TSX.

One of the hunters had a Browning bolt action, 7mm Rem Mag, 140 gr TSX, and I had my 30-06 Rem 700 with 200 gr Nosler Partitions.

Odd to me, no Mausers or Winchester 70's, or Rugers. Just an observation.

Before heading to Alaska for the grizzly hunt the guide and I had a great phone conversation about rifles. Learning that I'd already taken black bear, elk, mule deer & pronghorn with my 30-06, he was very comfortable with me using that rifle, as long as I used premium bullets, and specifically recommended the 200 grain Nosler. I've hunted mostly with Rem 700's since the mid 1970's, and have also shot some rifle competition, so can work the bolt pretty quickly.

The fellow with the 7mm made a terrific shot from prone at about 80 yards and his 6.5' bear sprinted a few yards and collapsed. Done. I watched that from a hill above camp, through my binos.

Seven days into the nine-day hunt, I was a little surprised when my 8' grizz popped out from behind a small tree at about 40 or 50 yards. I have to admit that it wasn't my best shooting. I remember my guide telling me "don't shoot it in the head." He was thinking potential record book grizzly, though it fell a little short of that. I was thinking that I very much wanted to put a Nosler in that bear's grape!

Didn't matter, 'cause I missed the first shot. Good grief. Bear altered course, still closing, but diagonally. I shot and broke the right front shoulder/upper leg. Bear down. Bear rolled. Bear got up. About that fast. Guide and I were both shooting now. Things were happening fast. It wasn't a charge, but things were happening fast. We were moving, bear was moving, bullets were flying. Several good shots, a couple of marginal ones, and my miss - and the bear was down.

It all happened really fast - yet I well remember the details like a slow-motion movie. I do own a couple of 375's and a 45/70 Marlin, but haven't hunted nearly as much with them as I have the 30-06, so I was glad that the 30-06 made the drive from Washington to Alaska with me, and was in my hands then, though I'm sure the bigger rifles would have worked fine, and might well have provided an advantage. Laughing here - I got some gentle ribbing that I hunted grizzly in Alaska with a push feed 30-06 Rem 700 in a walnut stock.

That bear hunt was a real big deal to me, and I picked up on a bit of info re bears & bear hunting. Even had a good chat with Phil well before the hunt.

So, not a big coastal bear, but perhaps of interest to folks reading the thread, or researching their choice of firearms and ammo.







Regards, Guy

My Winchester 95 in caliber .405 is the slickest feeding rifle I have ever owned. It even feeds upside down when fed slowly, (don't ask how I know). Even the great Winchester 71 and some of my bolt guns fail at that test. Would this ever matter? Probably not but I trust the 95 as the closest thing to controlled round feeding in a lever gun. With 300 grain Woodleighs it also kills stuff pretty well. If going for a lever I'd feel very comfortable with the 95.

I'd marginally rather have a 30-06 with 220 Partitions than a 7 Mag with 175's but those would be the minimum choices for me. I am not a bear hunter but I do hang out in the wilderness in the Yukon and my favourite 25-06 caribou rifle starts to feel pretty small when a bear comes by to check out the gut pile. Looking at the disposition paired with the bone and muscle mass I'd think a designated bear rifle would start at 9.3x62 and go up from there.

Cascade,

I’ve had a bait station every Spring with the exception of 2019 for the past 4 years. For two years, I actually ran the bait station with some co-workers, not a one of them had a Mauser style bolt action, everyone was push feed. One guy runs a Browning or Savage 338 WM, another a Mossberg 375 Ruger, and another guy I know runs a 300 WM Tikka T3X. I myself ran a Rem 700 .300 WM until this year as I ran a Ruger Hawkeye .338WM. Even the other hunters I have talked to that run bait stations all had a push feed with Remington 700’s being the most popular. While I always read on forums that Mauser or any other CRF rifles are preferred, I’ve yet to hunt with someone other than my neighbor and myself that use a CRF rifle here, regardless of what game they are pursuing.

I've been keeping up with the whole thread. I've had nothing to say because I've never even seen a Brown Bear. But I like reading about hunting them

Cascade,
Damn nice Bear! 👍