Mind you , I have been told by experts that a .44 magnum will work on bears.
Well, cowboys kinda had to, since the herd of horses of cattle might well not be thinking smart and get bit.
But if you see a rattler, no other reason to kill it. I used, as a volunteer ranger, just scoop them off the trails with my long walking staff.
In some areas I did carry a sidearm while hiking- but that was more for the worlds most dangerous mammal- Homo Sapiens. In one trail area that had been several attacks. However, I never needed it.
I was told a 12 gauge shotgun, with buck and slugs.
For all the reasons stated in my OP, the choice for what to carry is not between a firearm or nothing, which studies have shown to be equally effective (or ineffective, depending on how you look at it). Instead, you could consider carrying bear spray instead.
I feel like this discussion has devolved into “I’ve been told” hearsay regarding what caliber of round is sufficient to take down a bear. That wasn’t really the point of my OP. Again, the issue is not simply the size of the round. It’s being able to get one or more aimed shots off before the bear is in your face. And even if a .44 magnum or 12 gauge shotgun “will work on bears,” will it take the bear down fast enough before you are killed or seriously injured?
That is a different matter entirely. Personally, I have never felt the need to do this. I might feel differently if I were in a dangerous area, but I think I would rather simply avoid the area entirely instead.
FWIW, I did see a hiker in Alaska with his wife and child on the trail with a massive handgun in a holster on his hip…probably a .44 magnum. He is actually the only person I’ve ever seen on a hike who was armed. I remember thinking that if he was carrying this for protection against bears that he would be better served by carrying bear spray instead. But some people just like to carry guns.
With respect to bears, this holds true for the smaller black bears. However, my understanding is this is not a good idea if you are confronted with a brown (grizzly) bear. You don’t want to look large and threatening because this could provoke the bear to attack.
According to the name of the image that’s a 2 bore, which has a barrel diameter of roughly 1.3 inches (according to Mr. Google, I don’t have a conversion chart handy). A weapon’s “caliber” is just the barrel’s internal diameter.
I recall an episode of some R. Lee Ermey show where they showed a 50-caliber handgun for hunters who encounter bears. It had to be a revolver because a semiautomatic would require the same hand-pull on the slide as its recoil to chamber the first round. They had slo-mo footage of Ermey’s forearm rattling as he fired it.
Another show, one of those “Holy Crap, How Did I Survive That?” had a camper whose head had been knawed on by a polar bear. His group had neglected to hire a heavily armed Inuit guard as required by Canadian law.
Now, I cheerfully admit that non-veterans might well not get the gun out and be accurate. But will they be able to get the bear spray out in time then? It is a larger spray so less need for accuracy, true. But again, a shot in the air will send most animals scampering away.
For a few years some local folks tried their luck raising ostrich. They all eventually gave up or went bankrupt. I did learn while helping one “rancher” that if an ostrich cock attacks you, the correct response is to lay down on the ground, face down.
The bird might trample you, but you’ll just be bruised., maybe suffer some rib fractures. As a standing target they will kick forward and down, potentially disemboweling you with their sharp toenail.
Large birds, particularly cassowaries, will jump up and kick you in the stomach and eviscerate you. Ripping open your belly and spilling your guts out. Dinosaurs are not extinct.
Because Sir Richard Owen had really no idea what he was doing. he thought Ornithischia and Saurischia were all big giant lizards. But yes, Birds are part of the order Saurischia. By trying to lump those two together under “dinosaur”, technically birds are dinosaurs in one -and the most common- system of organization.
I stand by a sawed-off 12 gauge loaded with magnum hollow point slugs.
A). It makes a hell of a bang when it goes off, much louder than a handgun (I’ll admit I’ve only ever shot 9mm’s)
B). If you hit the bear with 1.5 ounces of hollow point lead with a magnum load, that bear is gonna feel it. And it is definitely going to leave a sizable mark/hole
Downsides are:
A). You can only have 3 shells in the magazine (Candian law). You can have 1 in the chamber, but I don’t like walking around like that
B). It is heavier and a bit more awkward than a handgun
I strongly disagree. Against a bear, you want to punch deep, so a full metal jacket round is your friend. Hollow-points negate penetration in favor of larger wound cavities. Good tactic if your target is built like a person or a deer. Bad tactic if your target has a foot of fur, muscle and fat to soak up the hollow-point before reaching vital organs.
In short, I think using a hollow-point against a bear is likely to result in a wounded, pissed-off bear that is going to make you a statistic.
All that is assuming you actually hit the bear in the heat of the moment at close range.
Or you could consider bear spray, in which the bear is not wounded but does want to get away from the irritant.
I do not use our shotgun for hunting, so I’ve removed the plug that limits the magazine to 3. I’m in the US, though. Is a sawed off shotgun legal to possess in Canada? I’ve shot targets with a sawed off, but I had the impression it was illegal to possess in the US.
Years ago I bought a Remington 870 12-gauge shotgun for home defense. It was marketed as a turkey gun and so had a shorter barrel—either 20 or 22 inches, I think. (It is illegal in the U.S. to possess shotguns with a barrel shorter than 18 inches.) I also didn’t use it for hunting, so I also removed the plug which limited the number of shells in the magazine.
Anyway, I’m sure it would work fine for turkeys. And home defense. But not bears.
And when the Feds got that law approved back in 1934, they picked a length that outlawed many of the severely shortened shotguns popular with the mobsters of the day.
An 18"+ barrel shotgun is distinctly short looking compared to conventional hunting or sport-shooting shotguns. But is also far longer than the large bore almost-pistols of the Prohibition era mobsters.
When I was a kid (13?) one of my dad’s coworkers came out to visit us “in the country”. He brought a bunch of his guns to target shoot.
The legal guns were in the car on the backseat. The illegal guns were in his trunk, hidden in a cool compartment that you’d never guess was there.
I went with them for a hike to where a backstop naturally existed. The guy handed me the sawed off 12 gauge and told me to go ahead and take the first shot. He suggested I shoot gangster style, with the gun at my hip.
I’d fired shotguns before, and thought firing from the hip would save me from the bruised shoulder I had suffered previously with regular shotties. I hit my target (a hillside) but I was a skinny kid and got knocked back on my ass. To their credit, my dad and his coworker didn’t laugh.
