Bear Spray

southbound said:
lol, an air horn? oooook.

I've spent a good amount of time hiking/camping in griz country, and generally zimkok is right. I love my guns and all, and I carry a .45 mag (anything smaller won't do shit anyhow) when I'm out, but I bring spray too. First, if a bear were to attack, the odds of you shooting a large bear in a place that will take it down, even with a decent caliber and you are a good shot, isn't great. A second or 3rd? Unlikely.

Bear spray is effective at a good distance, and isn't a one shot and it's done deal. In the event of an attack, even though I'm pretty good with the revolver, I'd still reach for the spray first.
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Are you saying a 357 mag isnt good enough, that it has to be a 45 mag?
 


Kiopa_Matt said:
The horn will phase them enough regardless of weather conditions to give you that few precious seconds to get away. Then I don't know... I guess just hope to hell there's a steep downhill slope close by you can run down. Bears are front heavy, so they can't do the downhill thing very quickly.
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Okay I want to address two things...

1) Horn will not stop a charge but loud noises are a pretty effective method of cresting space between you and a bear. Much more effective on black than brown bears. Spray is for when the bear is close enough to charge but still hasn't.

You're rolling the dice big time relying on anything to actually stop a charging grizzly - but some thing is better than nothing. Just make sure you get down into the fetal position in the 1 second you have.

2) I don't know who told you that bears can't run downhill but you should probably stop taking wilderness survival advice from them. How the fuck can you honestly believe that a four-legged animal (who can run faster than any human sprinter in history and is infinitely more athletic than any human) would struggle to go down a hill while your bipedal ass somehow wouldn't?

That concept is a dangerous bit of folk-science that just simply isn't true.

The only way you're getting out of a brown bear attack alive are A) you kill the bear or B) the bear becomes convinced you are dead/no longer a threat. They can climb, run and swim better and faster than you ever could - no matter how hard you trained.
 
Sorry for the double post - didn't edit my first one fast enough.

I'm not a big fan of anecdotal evidence but I feel comfortable sharing in this instance as the concept of bears having issue with hills is a well-known myth. I've spent a combined total of ~6-7 months of my life at altitude in the Rockies and have personally witnessed a large grizzly go fucking flying down a 35+ degree incline and make a turn to intercept a deer that would have left me with whiplash for months if not had broken my neck!

It's hard to appreciate how spectacularly powerful and athletic animals are if you haven't spent some intimate time with them in the wild or in a zoological setting. The vast majority of people in the first world and likely the world at large haven't so gaining perspective is tough. I've had the fortune of seeing some of the largest terrestrial predators on the planet in one or the other environments and they are far from anything to be trifled with.

The raw speed and power of some of these animals is absolutely humbling.
 
Antics said:
I'm not a big fan of anecdotal evidence but I feel comfortable sharing in this instance as the concept of bears having issue with hills is a well-known myth. I've spent a combined total of ~6-7 months of my life at altitude in the Rockies and have personally witnessed a large grizzly go fucking flying down a 35+ degree incline and make a turn to intercept a deer that would have left me with whiplash for months if not had broken my neck!
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Ohhh, just searched it, and you're right. Well, for fuck sakes... this is what I get for being raised in a small, ass backwards redneck town filled with hicks I guess.

You're right though. Uphill or downhill, you're not out running a bear.
 
I don't know anything about shooting bears, but I found some hunters talking about it on another forum.


"I shot it quartering slightly away at 150 yds. The first shot dropped it and it never moved. A spine shot? No. It entered about 1 inch behind the shoulder. On the exit side, a fistful sized chunk of lung was laying in the bushes with small pieces of the heart. After the first shot, the guy with me and I held on the brute. It didn't move at all initially. After about 20 secs, it rolled over once and we shot it several times to make sure it never tried to move again. BTW, I was shooting a 300 Mag. 180 gr. Accubond bullets"

big-brown-bear.jpg





"The first shot with my 30-06 165gr fail safe bullet was placed in the vitals and I double lunged the bruin and rolled him in the clear cut. I held on him with my excitement of a first bear kill for 15 seconds because of hearing how they are hard to bring down. He didnt get up untill of course I lowered my gun. He turned and I could see part of his loung through the exit hole. I shot the second time at about 125 yards and hit him and took a heart and another part of his lung. He kept going and at about 225 yards I finaly anchored him with a spine shot.


Big-Kodiak.jpg


"Most of my hunting is for bears....both black and grizz. If at all possible, I take the heart/lung shot every time. I have never seen a bear drop in its tracks from this shot"

bigpaw.png



nope.png
 
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eliquid said:
Are you saying a 357 mag isnt good enough, that it has to be a 45 mag?
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For black bears a .357 mag is fine. For a griz, it's not. I meant to type .44 mag in my last post, which is a pretty bad error. But even that is going to take good shot placement to be effective. Though there are larger, like say a .454 casull, they get harder to handle, and actually shooting them isn't a lot of fun. For me in that situation, the .44 mag is just the best blend of what I want in a weapon. Though if I had to go up against a grizzly I'd pick a rifle any day f the week. There's a reason why people, at least most of them, don't hunt big bears with a pistol.
 
IceToEskimos said:
I don't know anything about shooting bears, but I found some hunters talking about it on another forum.


"I shot it quartering slightly away at 150 yds. The first shot dropped it and it never moved. A spine shot? No. It entered about 1 inch behind the shoulder. On the exit side, a fistful sized chunk of lung was laying in the bushes with small pieces of the heart. After the first shot, the guy with me and I held on the brute. It didn't move at all initially. After about 20 secs, it rolled over once and we shot it several times to make sure it never tried to move again. BTW, I was shooting a 300 Mag. 180 gr. Accubond bullets"

big-brown-bear.jpg





"The first shot with my 30-06 165gr fail safe bullet was placed in the vitals and I double lunged the bruin and rolled him in the clear cut. I held on him with my excitement of a first bear kill for 15 seconds because of hearing how they are hard to bring down. He didnt get up untill of course I lowered my gun. He turned and I could see part of his loung through the exit hole. I shot the second time at about 125 yards and hit him and took a heart and another part of his lung. He kept going and at about 225 yards I finaly anchored him with a spine shot.


Big-Kodiak.jpg


"Most of my hunting is for bears....both black and grizz. If at all possible, I take the heart/lung shot every time. I have never seen a bear drop in its tracks from this shot"

bigpaw.png



nope.png
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This is a good example of why I'd choose the spray first in an attack situation. These bears were shot from the side, or from slightly behind by a hunter using a rifle that was able to take his time with the shot. And the bear was still going. Oh and at over 200 yards away at an unsuspecting animal.

Slightly different from using a pistol shooting at a pissed off, scared or surprised bear coming at you.

Don't get me wrong though, you are probably fucked anyway. :2drinkspit:

EDIT: Unless you are this guy
 
Have any of you actually been close to a bear in the wild?

Having been trout fishing in Alaska, I have been within 20 yards of some huge Bruins and even some mama's and cubs. We were pretty much surrounded by bears everyday. Walking up and down rivers where they feed, they would sometimes come out right up/down stream from you. It is an eye opening experience.

Only 1 guide carried a gun and it was .50 cal revolver. One other guy carried spray, the rest didn't carry anything. And these are people who do this everyday for 3 months straight.

In fact, when they got "too" close, they would simply shake there tackle box and scream "hey bear" and that would usually do the trick.

Now granted, these are bears in the wilderness, that don't see humans very often as we took float planes to remote areas of Alaska every morning.

These animals are amazingly strong and fast. Let me see if I can dig up some pics/videos.
 
zimok said:
Source on it being ineffective?

I read several first hand accounts of bear attacks where the spray was involved and it always stopped them dead in their tracks. Some of those accounts I've read were against grizzly bears as well, not the smaller black bears we have in my area. Even if the bear is angry and wants to get you, it can't magically remove capsaicin from its eyes/nose/lungs, how will it attack if it can't see?

It's very true you're unlikely to get attacked, however if you do, you're actually more likely to get attacked by a starving male bear that sees you as food(and where you did nothing 'wrong'), than a mother and her cubs.

List of fatal bear attacks in North America - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - type 'spray', the only instance of a fatal attack involving pepper spray was when it was used after the bear already killed a person to subdue the bear. People who have spray are notably absent from this list.
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I'd agree with this. I've heard from people with bear encounters while backpacking (not doing anything wrong) and even then only a couple where they actually had to use the spray. A guy I know that used it last year for the first time has had bears bluff charge him a number of times where he didn't need to use it. It worked every time. I carry it when backpacking in grizzly country and smokies.
 
Meatytreats said:
Here a few pics I took. Keep in mind, I am in the middle of the river fishing. I am not going anywhere fast, with full waders on and back pack in a rushing stream, you are basically dead if they decide you are food or a threat.

http://i.imgur.com/Ofz3EOY.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/ZJ3hsXE.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/EVtkVTj.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/i7rVLeN.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/MMP6yFZ.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/6TYdXmv.jpg
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That's badass man! Haven't made it to AK for any fishing yet, but it's on the list.

The .50 cal revolver your guide was carrying was probably a smith and wesson 500. I still haven't had a chance to shoot that gun yet. It's a beast though.

But yeah we always try to make some noise if we hiking and we know there are bears in the area. That old saying that they are more scared of you than you are of them and all that. Just don't want to be sneaking around and catch one by surprise!
 
Meatytreats said:
Have any of you actually been close to a bear in the wild?

Having been trout fishing in Alaska, I have been within 20 yards of some huge Bruins and even some mama's and cubs. We were pretty much surrounded by bears everyday. Walking up and down rivers where they feed, they would sometimes come out right up/down stream from you. It is an eye opening experience.

Only 1 guide carried a gun and it was .50 cal revolver. One other guy carried spray, the rest didn't carry anything. And these are people who do this everyday for 3 months straight.

In fact, when they got "too" close, they would simply shake there tackle box and scream "hey bear" and that would usually do the trick.

Now granted, these are bears in the wilderness, that don't see humans very often as we took float planes to remote areas of Alaska every morning.

These animals are amazingly strong and fast. Let me see if I can dig up some pics/videos.
Click to expand...

Yep, matches my experiences in Utah/Colorado/New Mexico/Washington/Oregon pretty much exactly.

They're not these bloodthirsty killing machines by any stretch of the imagination but if a brown bear sets it's sights on you...grab your ankles.

Black bears are a bunch of pussies by comparison but still intimidatingly large when seen in person from only a few feet away. It's remarkable how quiet these fuckers can be considering they weigh several hundred pounds or more.
 
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ8fi0hDQEk]Grizzly Man (2005) Documentary clip - YouTube[/ame]

skip to 1:05...why shoot a bear when you can just touch it on the nose and tell it to go back to its friends?
 
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