Bear Guns

First let me say I'm NOT a bear hunter. But with all the discussions on the group about bears, guns and calibers I thought some of you may be interested in reading this. It is an article in the latest North American Hunter on brown bears and calibers. Not real scientific but interesting none the less. The article uses information gleaned from a guides records of bear kills and basically details 85 kills and how many rounds it took to anchor the beasts. Seems like nearly 4 shots per bear was the average from a number of calibers from .270 to .375H&H. These were counting hunters shots and guides back up shots. Give it a read - interesting but the lines are there to be read between. Personally I don't want to anger anything that can s

The biggest problem is that hunters usually let the bears psych them out and they don't shoot straight. I've been hunting bears of all varieties for over 20 years in AK and Canada, and a .270 is plenty fine to kill them if you calm down and shoot them in the heart. A .270 is not a bear stopper, but it is a bear killer. If you honestly expect to stop a charge (which rarely, rarely happens despite the hooror stories that 'always happened to a freind of a friend', you need something in the range of a .404 Jeffrey or bigger.

Make the first shot a killing round. The BS about 'breaking them down' first has resulted in more wounded and lost bears than I care to think about.