arquebus357
New member
When I hike in grizzly country I carry a Stun Gun. I like getting up-close and personal with beers.
Having vivid memories come flooding back, I went in through the back and got my 300 Win Mag. I opened the door and proceeded to dispatch the little cub to a new home from 75 feet away. Two shots and he was toast. Much better than a .357 from 10 feet.
Seems that the 357 wasn't quite enough gun that day. I can understand the sentiment with the bear and the calf. But I absolutely do not understand shooting a cub. If I knew about this, I would have turned you in to a warden for that one. YMMVTwo summers ago I was riding on the mountain pasture. Came across a mostly eaten calf laying about 35 feet from a small cluster of good sized trees. I got off and went to take a closer look and scout for tracks. As I was circling around looking at fresh bear tracks and scat, I heard a rustling behind me in the trees. I turned around to see a decent sized black bear cautiously approaching out of the trees. I wasn't making much of any noise, so looking back, I'm sure it was more curious than anything.
For those who haven't raised livestock for a living, let me tell you, there are few things that will make you see red like a young piece of your livelihood laying dead on the ground partially consumed. When the apparent perpetrator (I doubt the bear killed the calf, but at that point I didn't care) shows up on scene, it makes it that much worse. As soon as I saw the bear I pulled my 5" .357 loaded with hot 158's and went to town.
First 2 shots were apparent hits with the next being a miss. This turned the bear broadside and stopped momentarily so I threw another 2 at it that were both direct hits to the body. After this, the sob turned and started coming at me!
Another hit stopped him again at about 10 feet and he dropped his rear but he was still on his fronts. Knowing I had to be getting low (dang hard to count to 8 when my adrenaline was pumping like it was) I tried to control my shaking as much as I could and proceeded to put one in his head.
I flipped open the cylinder and dumped everything out (this is when I discovered I only had one left) and hurriedly reloaded in case bear number two came out.
At this point, I was shaking quite hard so went off fifty yards and sat down for ten minutes or so to collect myself.
What I learned from this encounter - stuff a rifle in the scabbard - that's what its there for.
Then last summer, I came home to a cub in our front yard in our apple tree!
Having vivid memories come flooding back, I went in through the back and got my 300 Win Mag. I opened the door and proceeded to dispatch the little cub to a new home from 75 feet away. Two shots and he was toast. Much better than a .357 from 10 feet.
Having had too many run-ins with these fury creatures, if I had to go into Grizzly country, I wouldn't want anything less than a 3 1/2" 10 ga slug gun. For our black bear infested country, I now make much more noise and keep a .45-70 in the scabbard.
YMMV
Oh that's so scary. LOL. Where I used to live I'd have Bears in my yard every week. I've been in the yard with some huge Bears before. Often unarmed. I never had to go in the house and get a gun and shoot them. They're animals. They live in the woods. If I was that scared of them I'd move to the city.