Been there done that. Was lied to about it being an old unused nest. Not fun times but I got wadding for my muxzleloader
Suggestions for a bear defense shotgun
- Thread starter Doolittlethehyena
- Start date
Been there done that. Was lied to about it being an old unused nest. Not fun times but I got wadding for my muxzleloader
Double gives you those first 2 shots faster and if by chance you feed the bear an arm to save your face a short sxs could still be used if not already empty.
A black bear will either stand it's ground or retreat generally no need to shoot it. If it does come from a longer distance it'll likely stop with a bluff. It's it's close when it starts to come you better make the first shot count. Everyone has their preference and there's no real wrong answer except not having a gun maybe but I'll take a double first anyday. I generally carry a sxs 4570 when I bait or track a bear. I've only ever had to shoot one in defense and a 405gr rem fnsp worked perfectly. I'm sure a good 1oz slug would have done equally well. More than enough standoffs in berry patches and yes a dog is a great tool. My mastiff is extremely protective and would take on a bear to protect me
Licensed to kill
CGN Regular
- Location
- Peace Country Alberta
That was my thought but did not know so I looked it up. According to this site https://petkeen.com/canada-bear-attack-statistics/ , there are about 40 bear attacks annually world wide, 11 in North America and <1 in Canada annually. However, it DOES happen and if the risk provides a reason to buy another gun, sounds good to me.
Professional hunters in Africa who deal with dangerous game traditionslly have used a double barrel double trigger SxS gun. Never a pump. Why? First, because you have access to the fastest second shot. Second, because each barrel is operated by a separate trigger and lock. If one is broken the other will still work. YMMV.
- Location
- Southern Vancouver Island
This.^^
Also make sure the prick be well out in front of ye & snacking on smoked salmon.
we used a lot pump action shotguns for leopard follow up never for lions or buffaloes ... let alone elephant or rhino ...
Brutus
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
Peter Hathaway Capstick used a Winchester Model 12 for followup on wounded leopards.
You guys know there are always exceptions to everything? The point is the VAST majority of African guides over 140 years used the set up I’m describing for the reasons mentioned.
And both you and medvedqc are describing a very specific circumstance......wounded leopards.
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Guys, OP asked for a shotgun for hiking. While full size shotguns will do very well for bears, I do not think full size shotguns would be much fun while hiking. For hiking something compact such as shockwave is preferred because of size. You can put it in your back pack and not even know it is there.
I would not want to lug around a full size shotgun on a hike but that’s just me. P
I would not want to lug around a full size shotgun on a hike but that’s just me. P
These sorts of sweeping statements are especially loved by those who would like to sway public opinion via false representation of statistics - witness the Lancet publishing a study on how many lives were saved by the COVID jabs, claiming 20,000,000. They based that on exactly 1 'statistic' which was an imaginary line someone drew on a graph, showing that starting on the date of first vaccines released, deaths without the vaccines would suddenly, magically accelerate were it not for the miraculous vaccines. This line veered sharply upwards from the actual COVID-related death trend which was already starting to flatten at that date. Where did the line come from? Nobody knows.
Bringing it back to bear attacks; comparing such attacks to whole populations is a glaringly false statistical manipulation. What percentage of the North American population actually go back country hiking, in areas where bears live? Impossible to know with any real accuracy... but according to the most popular hiking trail app in the USA, AllTrails, fewer than 10,000,000 hikes are logged per year now. Given that most people using such apps are likely to go for 10+ hikes per year, that's fewer than 1,000,000 actual hikers from a population of over 370,000,000 people, or less than 0.3% who go out on trails for anything like a significant hike.
Of course that's 1 app, even if it's the most popular one. So let's be generous and suggest that more than 3x that number actually go for hikes - 1%. From that, any odds on a violent encounter with a bear can be increased by 2 orders of magnitude. And of course I'll freely admit that I'm guessing for the most part, as searches for how many people actually go for hikes result in a wide range of promotional materials, but extremely little in the way of actual studies, and then usually very region-specific, such as the Appalachian Trail. In that example we see that anywhere from about 3,500/year up to over 1,000,000/year hike the trail. Why the vast variation in reported numbers? The 3,500 or so are through-hikers, people who actually do the whole, vast trail. More than a million will go on portions of it each year, ranging between a couple of miles and maybe 50 miles with a night or two of camping.
Bringing it down to the individual level, I've ridden mountain bike trails on the North Vancouver mountains in the early through mid-1980's, lived at the base of Mt Fromme for a little while back then, and have hiked off and on anywhere from Lion's Bay/Brittannia to Deep Cove ever since. Hundreds of hikes on various mountains in the region, plus the odd camping trip further afield, as far as Whistler, even Pemberton, and several times along the Squamish River, but mostly I've satisfied my urge to be in the forest along the South faces of West and North Vancouver mountains: Cypress, Grouse, Fromme, and Seymour.
I have had 2 encounters with bears in 42 years. I'm far from the most avid of hikers, but there really aren't that many people along those trails, the woods mostly empty. The first encounter involved being chased out of the Seymour dump in the dark after bushwacking my way off the mountain with my bike. I'd suffered a minor bike part breakage and needed to cannibalize a bolt from somehwere else to make my seatpost secure, so I was abandoned by two 'friends' who were high and not patient enough to wait for the new guy to be ready for more riding. I found myself in pitch darkness on a late September evening, clouds and a no moon, maybe 1km from the dump, an area I didn't know. After stumbling into what I figured out was a dump, and carefully riding the dirt road until seeing the entrance gate, I heard a bear startle right behind/beside me, throwing a lot of gravel as it took up the chase. I've never ridden so hard in my life, and managed to do a running dismount, toss my bike over the steel-pipe gate, then grab it and re-mount after vaulting it, and rode hard until the sounds of the chase had long faded.
The second time was a few years ago when with my family on Mt Fromme, approaching Grouse. We heard a large bear throwing a log around rather violently, just the other side of some blackberry bushes. I had a 12ga with me, and put my hands on it while we very quietly crept past the area and well beyond it, managing to avoid drawing any attention to ourselves. We were lucky. From the sounds of that long being smashed around, it was a substantial bear, and I had little hope of succeeding should it have noticed us by sound and come running through the bushes.
I know multiple people who have had close encounters with bears on local trails and in various other places around SouthWestern BC. It's not all that rare. But I've known no one who was attacked. Still, if around 1% of the population hike, those 1 in 2.1million odds are thus reduced to 1 in 21,000 to reflect the hiking population's odds rather than the general population. One in twenty-one thousand doesn't seem like attacks are all that rare. I've been lucky, as are most hikers, but such attacks are more common than lottery wins among general population, for example, while vehicular accidents are much more common than bear attacks. Throwing numbers around has to be based on meaningful use of statistics. Whole-population comparisons just don't work when an activity is relatively rare in itself. One may as well compare one's risk of death by fentanyl overdose based on Canada's entire population against the 6,000 or so who die each year of late. Your odds go up rather dramatically if you are a routine drug user, which is a relatively small proportion of Canadians.
We have bears in our yard on our acreage every year. Cinnamon ones, black ones, big ones, little ones...
Only ever shot them with a klaxon horn. Ya a couple stop and look back, then they do come back but nothing aggressive....yet....
SO my go to is my M590A1 w/ Ghost sights....slug + 0Buck...repeat in the mag tube.....simple, reliable, robust...
Only ever shot them with a klaxon horn. Ya a couple stop and look back, then they do come back but nothing aggressive....yet....
SO my go to is my M590A1 w/ Ghost sights....slug + 0Buck...repeat in the mag tube.....simple, reliable, robust...
Or took fentanyl? That might work better.
As mentioned after decades of hiking only seen a Grizzly and Black Bear, we tend to make lots of noise and have dogs and of course not go out in early spring mostly summer and early fall.
I personally carry a 12.5" pump with slugs, but in reality no one knows how they will react when something is charging you and you have 2 or 3 seconds. Practicing on 5 gallon pales at 25, 50, and 75 yards will not be anywhere the same as something moving and you are sh_tting yourself.
The only other consideration for a firearm IMHO would be a short lever action in a .444, .450, 45-70, you need something slow and heavy to break shoulders and such.
Too long of a platform is not going to be fast, biggest issue I have is anything like these are heavy to pack.
I personally carry a 12.5" pump with slugs, but in reality no one knows how they will react when something is charging you and you have 2 or 3 seconds. Practicing on 5 gallon pales at 25, 50, and 75 yards will not be anywhere the same as something moving and you are sh_tting yourself.
The only other consideration for a firearm IMHO would be a short lever action in a .444, .450, 45-70, you need something slow and heavy to break shoulders and such.
Too long of a platform is not going to be fast, biggest issue I have is anything like these are heavy to pack.
