What's your go to 30 cal black bear bullet?

Bullet for black bear, I would choose 165 grain Nosler Accubond in my 300 H&H, which I will be using for bull moose this autumn.
 
Jimbobob08 said:
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What are you thinking for the .243, I’ve got a new one too and was thinking eld-x
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I’ll be shooting 100g partitions in the 243. They have been solid in my other 243.

I’ve never shot the eld-x my self. But last spring I got a call to help a friend recover a black bear. 3x not so great shots with a 7-08 and factory eld-x rounds. We were finding fragments all over the place.
They said all the shots were inside 150 yrds.
Wasn’t a huge bear either
 
Had a young lady as a client this week take a nice 300 pound boar with the 160 FTX (.30-30 bullet), loaded soft in a .308... so don't fuss too much about the bullet you choose.
 
Jimbobob08 said:
I give bears more respect in regards to bullet choice and shot placement vs whitetails. What I don’t see repeated nearly as often as “bears are not be hard to kill”, is they’re absolutely hard to track. They also tend to “disappear” under the smallest thing you’d never expect them to, where a whitetail often just dead runs straight until it drops and is easily seen. I’ve never stepped over a deer without knowing. I’ve seen 3 guys circling a bear within 40yards, often within just a few yards for 40min looking for a speck of blood before someone noticed the bear.

I’m on deer hunting, moose hunting, bear hunting, and dog blood tracking Facebook groups. While there’s less bear hunting in Ontario than deer and moose, the norm is to see far more people asking for help tracking a bear than any other species. Even archery deer doesn’t come close. Far more stories of never found bears too. I often think people give up when the bear was actually right there.

Over thinking a bear bullet isn’t a bad thing in my opinion
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I completely agree. While a 22LR in the vitals would eventually kill a bear, good luck retrieving the bear. Many moons ago I put a well placed 350 grain 45/70 projectile right in the bread basket of a bear at 50 yards, after tracking him for a few hours I gave up, only to find his remains 2 months later deep in the woods in the complete opposite direction that he initially led me. 45/70 is a more than adequate good bear round, problem was I was using hard cast lead cast projectiles at the time. Generally speaking hard cast lead does not deform very well. I am pretty sure the 45 cal bullet just penciled right through him. He eventually bled out after an impressive 500 yard dash through the thicket.

Now even though I know just about any bullet will eventually kill a bear but if you actually want to retrieve the bear I would give them the benefit of a partition or cup and core bullet with some decent mass and velocity.

I posted this in another sub forum but again this was this year's spring bear hunt, a very decent sized 6 foot black bear. Less than ideal frontal shot at 100 yards but the 300 Win mag 180 grain partition blew his heart in half and caused tremendous exsanguination. He dropped within 15 feet. As far as I'm concerned a perfect humane harvest.

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Honestly, I'd shoot a black bear with whatever 30-06 ammo I could lay my hands on. Like others, I'm a Partition shooter as often as possible and the 180gr NPT has never let me down from deer to caribou to muskox to moose, but if all I could lay my hands on was 150gr Power Point I wouldn't be too sad.
 
Nice rifle apu and a great chambering therein.

There’s this impression the .45-70 is a lot of gun on account of the recoil in handy carbines and the bore size. It’s the most over-estimated cartridge I’ve seen afield. Yea it does work, but you’ll get more effect on average out of a .270 on bears.
 
regulate34 said:
I’ll be shooting 100g partitions in the 243. They have been solid in my other 243.

I’ve never shot the eld-x my self. But last spring I got a call to help a friend recover a black bear. 3x not so great shots with a 7-08 and factory eld-x rounds. We were finding fragments all over the place.
They said all the shots were inside 150 yrds.
Wasn’t a huge bear either
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The ELD-X bullets are incredibly effective bullets, but they aren't particularly stout. I recovered one of three that I shot into a 260lb whitetail in Alberta last fall out of a 28 Nosler. The shots ranged from 330 to 350 yards and were all in the area behind the shoulder. Granted, they were clipping right along and likely impacted at around 2700, but I would have expected a little more than to only recover the jacket. The first shot made the buck very sick, but with that frangible a bullet I would have expected to see it perform a little better than that. Given that performance, I wouldn't be super confident about getting a pass-through which, on bears, is important to a pleasant tracking experience.
 
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