I do not have a wealth of experience fending off bears.Only one.
I was in AK,at the junction of the Nowitna and Yukon Rivers,200 miles from the nearest road.I was sleeping with my former spouse in a little 4 lb Moss tent,the kind with 2 hoops,.The bear put both front paws on my wife,and bit her through the tent at the lower part of her right buttock.She made a fuss and woke me up.I had my short bbl Win 97 full of slugs inside.I opend the door and he stuck his head in.I had not had coffee yet.With regard for not breaking my shotgun,I bumped him across the face and told him to go away.
He did,for a bit.But he was not leaving.
Hollering had no effect.He did not flinch at a warning shot.He just kept his eyes on me,no expression,and casually was moving closer.
I had looked at bear skulls in the museum at Fairbanks.There is spongy bone in the sinuses right up into the cranium.
I put the white bead on his nose and shot.The bear went down and came right back up,shaking his head.I focused on the centerline of rotation in his neck and shot again.He went down.
AK law require turning in the head and hide of an SD bear shoot.In the process,we examined the slug performance.
The first round took out the lower front teeth,the slug broke up to lead cornflakes and penetration was not much past the back of the throat.
The second slug broke up in the neck vertabrae.
This was a black bear,6 ft 6 in nose to tail.
I have also killed a cow elk with my .44 mag handgun.It was a 240 gr softpoint load.It broke up and stopped in the neck vertabrae.It did not exit.
From this very limited experience(which certainly trumps all those with NO experience) I have come to the conclusion that the projectile needs to be capable of penetration.
No hand gun will be overly powerful,though a degree of portability(so you will have it with you)and controllability is good.
A heavy 45 Colt load,or a .44 mag,I believe would be useful with hard cast heavy bullets.
In a shotgun slug,I would look to the premium ones designed for penetration.
I suggest any load designed for the SD handguns for SD is going to have limited penetration.It will ,hopefully,open up,do max trauma,and not exit the far side of a torso.Maybe,sometimes.
Any large solid creature,bear or cow,has more bone and tissue mass on the near side than both sides of a human.
If I had no other choice but a 9mm ,I'd go with a 147 gr FMJ purely for the penetration.
What I detect in some of the proponents of carrying handgun set up for SD on humans when the situation might be a bear,there is some illusion around how powerful the person feels with that gun versus the effect on the bear/cow.
And maybe,maybe,the folks who talk about how precisely they will place their shots an a moving bear at 12 feet really will place their shots precisely.Thats nice.Some will.
But,I think maybe most LEOs train with their handguns as much as a lot of folks who write opinion.And I think most LEO's know wild and poorly placed shots are a liability.
And I think most LEO's are more accustomed to,and prepared for a sudden,unexpected need to draw and use their handgun.
I think most of us have seen plenty of video footage of LEO's pulling their handgun and dumping a mag in the general direction of the earth and sky near the threat.
Yeah,maybe the folks who write opinion will place the shot behind the ear and can use a 22 just like slaughtering beef.Some guys are good.
But it might be most folks in the real crisis will not perform much different than most LEO's.And your Gold Dots or Hydra Shoks or Silvertips or Talons arent going to impress the cow any more than the ones in the video.
But,you do whatever makes you happy.
