Bear Attacks--Oh My!

In the following video, Ron Spomer interviews Phil Shoemaker who survived an attack by a brown bear in Alaska by shooting it dead with a 9mm pistol. I believe the segment below is from a longer interview from earlier this year about bear hunting in Alaska more generally.

 VIDEO: " 9mm Luger vs. Grizzly!" (11 min.)
Ron Spomer Outdoors

 If you like this type of information, here are a few articles you might enjoy:

• "‘Hero’ son, 12, saves dad being mauled by black bear: ‘Killed it on top of me’"--New York Post (Sept. 18, 2024). The 12 year old shot and killed a bear that had his father pinned to the ground and was mauling the man. The two had shot the bear earlier, but only wounded it. It's not clear whether the two were tracking the wounded bear or just chanced upon it when the attack occurred. Nothing about the type of rifle or caliber.
• "Elk hunter is savagely attacked by Grizzly bear before shooting the enraged adult male dead in Idaho"--Daily Mail (Sept. 8, 2024). This involved two archery hunters attacked by the bear while hunting, with one injured. According to the story, both were able to use handguns and killed the bear. Again, no information in the story as to the type of weapons used or the calibers.
• "A Montana man shot a grizzly bear during an attack – it saved his life, but here’s why experts say it’s not your best defense"--Advnture (via Yahoo) (August 18, 2024).

    This July, a 72-year-old man was picking huckleberries in Flathead National Forest by himself when he was attacked by a female grizzly bear. He managed to access his handgun, shooting and killing the bear and surviving the encounter with serious injuries.

    After a summer that brought several high-profile grizzly bear attacks – a veteran who was mauled while hiking in Grand Teton National Park and a Canadian trail runner who says she was saved by her hair clip – some are asking if guns should be as ubiquitous as hiking boots and backpacks when it comes to recreating in bear country.

    The idea of using a firearm against bears is something bear biologist and Tooth and Claw podcast host Wes Larson tells us he hears a lot, but it’s not what he recommends.

 

Larson recommends "avoidance" first, but if that fails, using bear spray. His reasoning seems to be that it is too easy to miss the bear when using a handgun so the bear spray is superior because “[b]ear spray shoots out a whole cloud of aerosolized pepper spray, so when the bear is still coming at you, it passes through that cloud.” Larson is more interested in protecting the bear, not anyone taking his advice, as the next article reminds us.

• "Myth that Bear Spray Will Save You Proves Deadly Once Again" by John Farnam at Ammo Land. This article discusses an October  2023 incident where a couple hiking in Banff National Park in Canada’s Alberta Provence where both killed and partially eaten by a female grizzly bear. Farnam observes: "A fully-discharged bottle of bear spray was discovered at the scene. The bear was apparently unimpressed!" 

    The reality, and this is what the research shows, is that bear spray can be effective against a curious bear or one that has ventured uncomfortably close, but is not aggressive. But that is very different from deterring a bear intent on killing you.

• "Modern Sporting Rifles as Bear Stoppers? They Worked in Every Recorded Incident" by Dean Weingarten at Ammo Land. Weingarten, as you may know, has been collecting information on bear attacks for years documenting what worked (and what didn't). His primary emphasis has been on handguns, but in this article he turns his attention to the modern sporting rifle. I've never doubted they could work since elephant poachers often used AKs, but Weingarten offers more specific data. From the article:

    Of the defensive bear shootings I have found, four of them were with rifles reasonably characterized as semi-automatic civilian versions of popular military rifles.

    All four defensive shootings were successful. Modern sporting rifles most commonly are AR15 or AK47 style semi-automatic rifles. They are the most popular rifles in today’s America. It is certain more bears will be shot with them in the future.  ...

 He then goes on to describe each incident. Three of the incidents involved an AR style rifle, two using 5.56/.223 and the third shooting 6.8 SPC. The bears involved were a polar bear, and two black bears, respectively (yes, the polar bear was taken down with .223). A fourth incident, involving a grizzly bear attack in Alaska, was resolved by someone using an AK-74 style rifle shooting 5.45x39. All involved multiple shots (although it only took two shots from the 6.8 to kill the bear). So these are not bear hunting rifles, but worked perfectly fine for bear defense.

• "Details of .22 Pistol Defense Failure Against Polar Bear in Norway" by Dean Weingarten at Ammo Land. One of the few cases documented by Weingarten where a handgun failed to stop a bear attack involved an attempt to stop a polar bear with a .22 pistol. Weingarten found additional information concerning that attack in order to put it in its proper perspective. After quoting from a more detailed description of the incident, Weingarten notes three things about the response:

1. First, the group started shooting at the bear when it was still 50 feet away;
2. Two of the men kept throwing the handgun back and forth to each other as they would take a shot and then pass it off to the other, and so on;
3. And, finally, although they had shot the bear in the head 3 times, it was ineffective. Weingarten explains:

    Three .22 rounds hit the polar bear in the head. None entered the cranium. This is not unexpected. The brain of a polar bear may be slightly larger than a grizzly. A grizzly bear brain is about the size of a pint jar (29 cubic inches). The head of a large Kodiak bear has a volume of approximately 808 cubic inches, based on measurements supplied by Tom Smith of Brigham Young University. The Kodiak bear measured by Dr. Smith was exceptionally large, estimated at 1,400 pounds. If we assume a 1,000-pound polar bear, and proportional measurements, the head volume would be about 577 cubic inches or 2.5 gallons.

    If you have a pint jar in a 2.5-gallon container, you have to know where the jar is located to be able to hit it. It is easy to miss. There is a lot of muscle and bone in a bear head that can absorb or deflect a .22 LR bullet if they hit at a poor angle or in the wrong place.  A .22 is powerful enough to reach a bear’s brain if it hits the correct place at a reasonable angle.