Underpowered, overgunned and idiots

westcoaster said:
A gentleman I know in Quesnel tried to kill a cow with a 12 guage by shooting it in the head with a slug at point blank range. He told me that the slug bounced of the cow's skull and stunned it. IIRC he went back to the house and shot it with his 30 30.

Makes me less confident in stopping something with a shotgun.

I subscribe to the wound channel through the lungs school of thought, with a larger hole being better.
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That's funny.

When my dad was a kid, he and his brother decided to see what would happen if the held a slingshot right up to the neighbor's cow's forehead and shot it with one of the magnum sized marbles that used to come in the 101 piece marble bags. Well the cow hit the dirt on the spot and didn't move a muscle. The two kids fled the scene and never did find out if the cow was dead or just knocked out. I'd be surprised if a 12 guage slug runs second fiddle to a large marble in a slingshot....:D
 
It's certainly possible that the 12ga slug didn't kill the cow, stranger things have happened and anything is possible. I wouldn't go so far as to say that a 12ga "won't" kill a cow point blank ;) but it's not what I would choose if I had other options against an angry cow... or bear... or... bison
 
westcoaster said:
A gentleman I know in Quesnel tried to kill a cow with a 12 guage by shooting it in the head with a slug at point blank range. He told me that the slug bounced of the cow's skull and stunned it. IIRC he went back to the house and shot it with his 30 30.

Makes me less confident in stopping something with a shotgun.

I subscribe to the wound channel through the lungs school of thought, with a larger hole being better.
Click to expand...

I prefer rifles to shotguns myself, but I have never witnessed a slug bounce off anything that was living. Not that I'm suggesting that you are not repeating the story as it was reported to you, but it requires some critical thought in the light of day. Even foster slugs, which are my least favorite, produce terminal performance which looks pretty good compared to the round ball loaded black powder rifles that frontiersmen carried prior to the invention of cartridge guns, those balls didn't bounce off game either, provided the powder charge hadn't degraded. A 1 oz pure lead slug traveling between 1200 and 1600 fps won't bounce off bone even if penetration is minimal.

I suspect a poor shot which resulted in an indirect glancing blow at a steep angle, or perhaps the slug was stored poorly causing the load to degrade and not produce the velocity it should have. Your point blank reference probably means contact close, which is the way the media misuses the term, but it really means the distance to the target that allows a hit without having to take trajectory into consideration.

The "shoot through the lungs" school of thought in a hunting situation will always put meat in the freezer when an appropriate bullet is used. But in a defensive scenario with dangerous game, it takes far to long for the lung shot to deprive the brain of oxygen and will not stop the animal's forward progression, nor prevent your injury or death.
 
BigUglyMan said:
Wasn't it the USFS that did up a report (some years ago but I remember it coming up on CGN - I've got it around here somewhere) where they concluded that the 30-06 with 220 grain bullets was their best combination for bear defense?
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Both the USFS and the Alaskan Fish and Game have published papers saying they consider the .30/06 loaded with 220s reliable for bear work, but I don't recall it being labeled "the best." It seems to me that the '06 220 was listed as a practical minimum for folks who didn't have access to, or prowess with, more powerful firearms. I just saw an updated circular from the State of Alaska suggesting a .300 magnum or a 12 ga for defense. This is curious as it seems unlikely that, at the ranges over which defensive shooting takes place, a .300 could do anything that the '06/220 couldn't. IMHO, they would be better off to tell folks where to aim rather than make arbitrary cartridge recommendations which might be beyond the abilities of the occasional shooter to use effectively.
 
Boomer said:
I suspect a poor shot which resulted in an indirect glancing blow at a steep angle, or perhaps the slug was stored poorly causing the load to degrade and not produce the velocity it should have. Your point blank reference probably means contact close, which is the way the media misuses the term, but it really means the distance to the target that allows a hit without having to take trajectory into consideration.

The "shoot through the lungs" school of thought in a hunting situation will always put meat in the freezer when an appropriate bullet is used. But in a defensive scenario with dangerous game, it takes far to long for the lung shot to deprive the brain of oxygen and will not stop the animal's forward progression, nor prevent your injury or death.
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I would tend to agree with you as to the shot being awkwardly angled. We never delved further into it. I did take it at face value as he wasn't trying to make a point he was more puzzled than anything. I shared it on this thread to illustrate that things often don't go as one thinks they should.

The last time I shot a bear that was coming for us I was packing my 416 Rigby. A hunting partners son had come with us on his first bear hunt and had superficially wounded a big boar which then ran into some thick bush nearby.

My partner and I tracked the bear for awhile. The trail kept button hooking back as if he was watching us (which he probably was). Suddenly I saw a dark shadow moving and it was him, somewhere less than 30 feet away, as he was coming around a root ball on a windfall toward us.

I don't actually remember shooting the bear or aiming. It was kind of like, "There he is!", as I bring my rifle to my shoulder. "Shoot him!", my partner says (probably unecessarily). Then he's saying "Nice shot", and the bear is dead (there is no felt recoil at these times).

I shot the bear through both lungs and part of one shoulder - I don't remember aiming that way, it just happened too fast. The 400 grain Swift AFrame made a large wound channel through the bear and carried on to parts unknown. The bear looked like it was physically picked up and thrown three or four feet into a tree behind it where it twitched once and died.

Boomer, I don't know if a pure lung shot would have done it or not. At times like that things are happening way too fast. I have seen bears go down with one lung shot, just drop in their tracks. And some, not so much. From my experience bears are kind of like people, some are tough and won't go down and some are not.

I was glad to be carrying the Rigby that day.
 
westcoaster said:
A gentleman I know in Quesnel tried to kill a cow with a 12 guage by shooting it in the head with a slug at point blank range. He told me that the slug bounced of the cow's skull and stunned it. IIRC he went back to the house and shot it with his 30 30.

Makes me less confident in stopping something with a shotgun.

I subscribe to the wound channel through the lungs school of thought, with a larger hole being better.
Click to expand...

I know two people who have killed cattle with 12 gauge slugs in barns, in one case a chunk of the skull was dislodged, both cattle died abruptly.

I think shot angle has alot to do with how a soft lead 12 gauge slug performs.
 
Why not? said:
There has never been a three bear limit for grizzly bear. Well, never is a long time, but certainly not in the last fifty years.

You may be thinking about the actual limit, which is one grizzly bear every three years.

Ted
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i can't argue too much, but i am pretty sure that JOC wrote about the limit being 3 bears, of course this would have been circa 1947. then you have the times and places where they where considered pests.

hard to say, i don't believe that anyone alive today has taken 60 grizzlies (barring maybe guides with finishing shots). but set prices back to 1965 and i'd believe there were guys around who had taken that many.
 
Northman999 said:
I read the articles and, honestly, I kind of had a hard time figuring out what the point was, other than the general idea that it is better to err on the side of using more rifle than is needed, instead of less.

The 60 grizzly thing seems like horse poopy to me.

As for the bear defense thing that came up recently, published data I found from BC forest services indicated their research showed the .338 win mag had the highest percentage of one shot stops on bears of anything they had data on. They felt it likely had the best blend of big bullets and speed that a typical hunter could handle. And yes, they did have data from more powerful rifles, but their stopping percentages were lower. They also clearly stated that, based on their information, a shotgun with slugs was not nearly as effective at close range as a medium magnum rifle. A medium magnum was specifically their reccomended bear defense firearm.
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This post contains information that could save your life some day. ;)

Read it over and over.

The man who posted this, and the men wo compiled the information, I'd say have their finger on the pulse of reality.
 
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