>>>>>Buckshot for everything is a one trick pony. For bear, I would NOT limit my range to point blank, which is what you get with buckshot. A slug is much more likely to give you a kill or cripple chance out beyond 25 yards. If you dont think a bear can cover 25 yards real quick, then you probably should not go where they play.<<<<<
Mannlicher,
The problem is that shooting a bear at 25 yards is probably going to earn you a felony conviction. In some locales where bears are very common (like 1 per square mile in parts of SW Alaska), shooting every bear that came close to you, or even every bear that acted "aggessively" (it puffed up, pounded the ground, roared, etc) would mean leaving a trail of dead bears everywhere you went. Brown/grizzly bears in particular will make some sort of threat display fairly often. Anyone who has spent any time around these critters will tell you that when you see that activity, it means you are relatively safe. It means that the bear has seen you and that you are far enough way that he doesn't feel immediately threatened - basically, he's just alerting YOU to his presence and as long as you don't proceed any closer (or run away and identify yourself as "prey") he'll back off and leave. I guess it's like hearing a rattlesnake buzzing - the same rules apply. Or, an even better analogy might be the one about the barking dog never being the one that bites you.
The typical mauling happens when you surprise a bear by entering his safety envelope - something like ten yards. There's no warning, the bear simply lunges at the intruder.
And trust me, completely aside from the legal entanglements, you do not want to shoot a grizzly bear unless you absolutely have to. Over in the General Discussion forum is a thread about a bear mauling that happened here a week or so ago. A guy shot an inland grizzly (these are small, like lower 48 grizzlies, not one of the big coastal grizzlies) with a .458. In fact he shot it twice, once in the shoulder and once in the leg. He didn't kill it and returned the next day to track it down and instead, it got him. His wife shot it three more times in the chest with a .375 H&H before it dropped the husband and died.