Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game shot placement for charging grizzly

Vern
You expect us to believe that??? Through his head??? EVERYONE knows all projectiles will bounce off a bear's noggin! Especially a slug! Sheesh!

Yeah- what Art said. Sheesh!

(Good call!).

Years ago a good friend was building a cabin out in the tall weeds, with his wife, daughters, and a couple nephews living in various tents around the site. As one nephew, Steve, told me, he woke up in the wee hours of the morning to see (by carefully peeking - for cause - out the tent flap) his uncle herding a large black out of camp at gun point. Right past Steve's tent flap - about 6 feet out, Uncle talking to the bear the whole time. Having shot a small black bear several days before for camp meat, and jokingly planting the stiffened carcass about 6 inches outside Steve's tent flap before calling Steve awake) Uncle really didn't want to pot another, but at the edge of the clearing the bear started to turn around on him and that's all she wrote.

Uncle came stomping back past Steve's tent muttering,,,,," I ain't in no goddam mood to "ef" with no goddam bear in the middle of the goddam night!"

Bears are like people- they seem to all have different characters. One thing for sure the big grizzlies can run down a deer in less than a 100 yards. Deer can out pace horses and how fast can horses go at full gallop. Probably near 40 mile an hour or 19.5 yards in one second. Your reaction time would consume about 1-2 seconds, followed by turning,shouldering, finding your moving target, and then shooting. I beg to differ with your comment Sitka-no disrespect intended. If that grizz really wanted your ass- you wouldn't be telling the story about shooting a bear at 24 yards. He didn't know you were there or he was in a friendly mood.

Art,
Yup...plumb through the skull with an old Foster slug mind you...

Another incident at fish camp....I looked up from cooking dinner to see the butt of a 200 pound black bear above the gunwale of my freight canoe....he was rummaging for grub/fish.....my partner grabbed the 12 ga with Fosters and waited until the bear stood up in the bow and shot.....another friend says: "you missed as I saw the slug skip off the water"......about then we heard the last bawl of an expiring bear 20 feet from the canoe.....the slug had gone plumb through the rib cage and lungs and skipped across the lake for a half mile.....

The ribs of that bear were very similar in size to pork ribs from a rack of ribs at the local dining establishment....certainly not armor plated!

378,

I don't think he led us to believe that it was a real charge.

I've seen a few grizzlies at full tilt, across broken ground, and all I can say is I'm sure glad they were heading away.

My defence would be to shoot for center of mass. If the first shot is not fatal, the best you could hope for, is to slow the bear up enough for a follow up shot(s).

RO

378
If I ever slow my reaction time to 1-2 seconds BEFORE turning and shouldering my rifle, please just pull the oxygen tube, okay? Having been around bears quite a bit I fail to see any mysticism in their physical abilities. They are fast, but they cannot go beyond the bounds of physics...
art

Vern
I have posted here quite a while ago about a Kodiak bear I shot that required follow-up shooting in the alders... The foster style slugs were very impressive in a lot of respects. One broke the collar bone and bounced down along the ribs to the last attached rib and hung a hard right. It plowed through the liver and left.

The second shaved a little hair atop the head, hit just off-center in the neck and exited the throat. (An 8 1/2' Kodiak bear, let anyone that believes in shooting them under the chin do that geometry.) And I cannot remember exactly what the third did... But the bear died.
art

I have actually been charged by a grizzly and killed it.I was grizzly hunting when the bear appeared about 100 yards off as we climbed a slide to get to a good vantage point.It stood on it's hind legs and tried to smell us before returning to all fours.Then it began walking towards us on a sheep trail.I was deciding if this bear was big enough to kill,when the bear began to trot,then changed to a flat out charge towards us.At 40 yards,I fired and the bullet struck the base of the neck.The bear stopped in it's tracks and turned,so I broke both front shoulders with a second shot.It rolled a couple of hundred yards into a pile of brush.We rolled it down to the river bank and skinned it,finding the first bullet in the rear hip.I was using a 338x8mm remmag with a Jensen j26 bullet.The bear weighed around 400lbs and squared 6'8".

Vern and Sitka,
Well I guess you guys have had much better luck with the foster slugs, I had one deflect of the rear window of a Buick and saw a second one fail to make it thorugh a car door on the same incident. I have also seen 00buck go through the rear window of a Jeep Cherokee and fail to go through a headrest. I think they are great on softer targets and I am somewhat suprised with the excellent results you have observed. I guess as long as the bear isnt charging in a Buick your just fine.

Stubby
At 40 yards that was not even close to a charge. I have had many bears come a LOT closer than that before breaking off "charges." Last October I had a bear running "at me" from less than half that distance. It was obvious what the bear was doing and charging was not on its agenda. Your bear fantasies aside, they are still not magic.
art

I'm not convinced that bears are all that fast....I've watched barren ground grizzlies repeatedly try to catch caribou calves that are a few days old...maybe a week....but without a close ambush, the calves repeatedly outran the bear.....of course that is open tundra.....the element of surprise is essential for a bear to catch most adult members of the deer family IMO.

And for shotguns, I would prefer the Brenneke or some hardened slug for bears but I had a supplier of free 12 ga slugs at the time.....

Vern - I was once watching through binocs, a large brown bear flipping rocks on a hillside way above us - presumably for voles or pikas. Suddenly she turned and covered about 200 later paced yards in nothing flat- maybe 8 seconds, only to re-emerge a bit later with her new cubs from a brush thicket. I mean, she was stretched out and MOVING! I'd guess her at 9 foot or so. The rocks proved out to be an estimated 200 to 300 lbs, mostly... It impressed me.....

I've had the luck never to face a real charge, but I'm with Art. I'm shooting for center of mass, holding for forehead, center bottom of eyes (he's incoming, plus reaction time, plus velocity = probably good stuff)) And shooting a lot!, in the time allowed! With whatever I've got on hand at the time.

I'd really prefer I never...

Vern,
You've gotta remember though, that those caribou can REALLY move over the rocky, spongy tundra, far better than most anything else alive. Those huge hooves (which are almost as big as those of a moose) just allow them to float over top of the hummocks. I would like to see a caribou outrun a grizz over flat, solid ground. I think the tables would turn.

Well, I have seen a grizzly trying to catch caribou migrating through a pass with great flat surfaces and all the bear got was excercise... And lots of it.

I guess all that really matters is that they can sure as hell catch me.....

Well, it just depends on how far the grizz has got to run to catch up to the 'bou. Caribou are marathon runners, grizzly bears are sprinters.


And yup, Vern's got it right. In the end, all that matters is that without question, they can catch any human alive in short order.

It seems pretty clear and obvious that the third slug disintegrated as it bounced off the bear's skull.

Shoot it in the mouth- At least it can't eat you after it's killed you.

Talk to anyone who has ran grizzlies with hounds, then get back to us. Bears have incredible endurance.

RO

<------ have run black bears with hounds, (hounds also being marathoner's) and can say that they will run a very long time.

Have also watched grizzlies "sprint" up slide chutes for thousands of yards, without slowing down for a break.