favorite black bear HUNTING caliber

my wife's great great grand pappy used a tomahawk!
My selection choices are 300 Wby mag, 30-06, 308 & 7x57.
1st choice would be the 308 repeater with HDM.
2nd 7x57 BM FP
3rd the bigger one of the two single shots
 
I haven't found black bears to be hard to kill at all in my role of hunter/daddy guide, but that is from the vantage point of using calibers that have also proven to be rapid killers on anything else. That might serve to stack the deck a bit. So far that spans from the .257 Weatherby, through the .270 in WSM and Weatherby flavors, 7mm STW, .300 Win, .375 H&H and we even slipped a smokeless muzzleloader in there with 300 grain Hornady SSTs. Logic wants me to stay away from the smallest extremes, but observation is sort of forcing home the point that it might not make much difference.

My favorite is whatever I feel like using that that day.
 
If I was going to hunt the blacky tomorrow I would take my 22 250 and my 20g slug gun with the rifled barrel and luppy scope ,,,Dutch
 
GreenBob said:
If you are not in sales.... you should be!

I caught myself googling .375 Ruger Alaskan after reading your Thor smackdown description.
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LOL, Thanks. I wasn't exaggerating though!!! I just bought it to have a .375 caliber in the safe in case I went a bit further northwest for a grizz. But, the damn gun "snuck up on me" and became my favorite rifle EVER. It doesn't even hurt as much to shoot as my Savage 116 Weather warrior in .30-06 or my Mossberg 500 12guage. More like an "authoritative shove" into my shoulder. I find my .300 win mag and even the .338 win mag I recently owned were A LOT more uncomfortable to shoot. As an added bonus, it is also my most accurate rifle at the bench. (although I have found that a lot of people say a .375 or other large caliber rifle shoot well. )
 
I must say, even though I LOVE MY .375 Ruger, I did take a decently big blackie with my .300win mag. He probably made it about 10 yards (he was flipping and kicking his legs , so he rolled about 10 yards. ) That thing smashed him also. In my experience (being of course, only talking about the direct contact I have had with bears as either the primary shooter or the backup shooter for a friend. ) that there was a measurable difference between the time it took for the bears to expire when shot with a powerful gun versus a normal hunting rifle. All the shots I have witnessed (25+) on black bears (no bear under 250lbs) showed me that the energy level imparted to the animal with the bigger gun definitely helped. Maybe this is not the norm as MANY people shoot with great success using 30-30's and .243wins. I just prefer giving the animal the respect it deserves and killing it as quickly as I can, using the gun that imparts the greatest level of smackdown I own. Anytime I ever shot a bear with a "sub-caliber" gun such as a .270 cal or lower, it was an incidental kill while out hunting a different species. One of the best things about the NWT is that there is no draw for game. Just being a resident allows you to get a moose, bear, wolverine, wolf tag over the counter. So I try to take a blackie each year, but rarely is my hunt centered on bear. Usually see one while moose hunting.
 
I got a Puma 1892 in 454 Casull for bear spray duty. It holds 9+1 rounds. I like to load it with 300 gr Hornady XTP Mag that travel at 2000 fps at the muzzle.
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150 GR. in 8mmx57 bear walked 5 yds. Hit hind quarter at 25 yds. Bear was quartering away from me. Bad shot placement. very little meat ruined though. Won't take this shot again too high chance of screwing up. Bear fever?
165 gr. in .30-06 bear walked 10 yds. Heart/lung shot at 10 yds. Bear was walking broad side to me. No meat ruined. shot was through and through.

Next rifle might be in 9.3x62 just for fun.
 
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