Seem's that nothing is settled and nothing will be. Somewhere in here quite a while back, someone wrote about a guy he knew. The guy had a close encounter with a polar bear; I believe he called it a face to face confrontation. The guy pulled out his 9mm auto and started firing. I think it was the third round when the gun double (?) fed and jambed. He then jumped on his snowmobile and got away.
Assuming that was true, one of you guys thats very good with your 454 Causall on your snub nose hell bender had better have it with you if you should run into that bear. It just may have a couple 124 gr slugs stuck in it somewhere making it unfriendly. I hope when you get thru, it doesn't have a couple 300 gr slugs in its arse!
Of course the above story proves Lawdog wrong about how much time you have. Either that or polar bears in face to face, maybe it was point blank range, are very slow indeed! Two shots, a jambed gun and still time to jump on a snowmobile and ride away. :wink:
Well Don, I believe that story about as much as I believed the one that was circulating around 5 or 6 years ago about some fisherman in Alaska defended himself against a Brown Bear with his trusty 9mm auto at point blank range. It was finely reviled that the guy had shot the bear all right but he didnt kill it nor was the range point blank. More like 70 yards and it was his friend using a 12 ga. shotgun loaded with Brenneke slugs that killed the bear, AT 20 YARDS. The guy with the 9mm and another fisherman shooting a .357 started banging away when the bear showed over the bank behind them at around 70 yards. The bear didnt charge until after those two started shooting. Both men were fined by Alaska Fish & Game. Lawdog
By Zaz Hollander
Anchorage Daily News
(Published: August 18, 2002)
A fisherman shot and killed a sow grizzly as she charged him in the early morning darkness Saturday on the banks of the Russian River.
The bear surprised Garen Brenner and two friends about 2:30 a.m. as they packed up their gear at one of the Kenai Peninsula's most popular fishing spots, said Larry Lewis, an Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife technician on the peninsula.
Brenner heard his friend yell "Bear! Bear!" and looked downriver to see the sow a few yards down the bank eyeing the friend. The bear lost interest in Brenner's friend after he backed into the water and threw his shotgun at her.
But then she turned, looked up at Brenner and lunged, said Lewis, who interviewed the three men Saturday.
Brenner fired at the center of the hulking shape
closing to four or five feet away. He fired
twice. The sow, estimated at 400 to 450 pounds, went down. Then Brenner fired three more shots into her head.
He shot the bear with a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol. Lewis said such a low-caliber gun ordinarily doesn't pack enough punch to kill a bear. But Brenner loaded the pistol with full-metal-jacket bullets that penetrated to the bear's vital organs, he said.
"I think that's what saved his bacon," Lewis said.
The bear most likely was protecting her yearling cub, which waited well behind her above the steep bank, wildlife officials said.
After the shooting, the cub ran up and down the bank near its mother's body, bawling in distress. "It would stop and smell the bear, the sow, and then it would go into the water a ways, then it would come back," said Bill Shuster, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Forest Service.
Local fishing guide Brandon Maes ran into the cub as he fished the Upper Kenai River near its confluence with the Russian. The cub charged, and Maes waded across the swift, chest-deep river to an island. The bear backed off but not before charging the guide's buddies in a boat nearby.
Soon after, Lewis tranquilized the cub, tagged and collared her and moved her to the south side of Skilak Lake.
The encounter was the latest of several close calls between people and bears along Southcentral rivers and streams. The Russian is thick with spawned-out sockeye that draw bears.
Authorities are looking into whether the dead bear is the same sow that attacked a Soldotna mother and son hiking Resurrection Pass Trail on Friday afternoon about three miles from Cooper Landing.
That bear, also accompanied by a cub, raked the mother's face with her claws and bit the son.
Nonetheless, people going into Gwin's store expressed dismay Saturday that Brenner killed the brown bear, said Linda Krack, a Washington state resident working there on Saturday.
"I'm not from here, but locals were pretty angry," Krack said. "Rumor had it, it wasn't necessary, but I sure don't know. I wasn't there. I didn't have it charging after me."
Lewis, who interviewed the fishermen on Saturday, dismissed such criticism. "That's absolute nonsense," he said. "He got a hearty handshake and a 'job well done' for saving himself and his buddies."----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NO fines, they skinned out the bear and turned in the hide,head and paws as required by law.
Under 12 ft and coming, not 70 yards. I was fishing the Russian that weekend, spoke with a F&G officer about it and he conveyed to me that the 9 mm had delivered the "killing" wounds from what he'd observed of the carcass. Speculation, yes, but from a pretty skookum gentleman.
There WAS a second pistol involved, no caliber given, but the shotgun was never fired....more on the story here.
http://www.adn.com/front/story/1633810p-1751603c.htmlPretty much a comedy of errors that luckily resulted only in a dead bear. MANY opportunities here for human fatalities as well. :wink:
