By Jim Dickson | Contributing writer
Before jumping into the three different kinds of bears native to North America a look at bears in general and the proper tools for hunting them.
Bears are highly intelligent animals. Indeed, the director of the Bronx zoo in the 1930’s famously stated, “My bears are smarter than my great apes.” Doug Seus, the man who trains grizzly bears that appear in the movies told me “Bears can often learn a new trick on the first try.”
Bears have incredibly good eyesight and can also see colors very well. At one place in Alaska where the rangers are called to run problem bears away from fishermen, the bears first learned to recognize the ranger’s uniforms and left. When the rangers adopted civilian clothes to get closer and identify the troublemaker they found that the bears were recognizing their faces even at 110 yards with a hoodie on and leaving.
You can judge the size of a bear by the proportion of the head to the body. Young bears have big heads while a big bear’s head looks small in proportion to its body.
Like people, most bears don’t want to hurt you but also like people, there are always a few that do.
Bears are predators and there is always a small minority of every species that will prey on humans.
Most people can look at a big dog they meet on the street and tell instantly if it is threatening or harmless. You can generally look at a bear and tell the same way.
While it is true that most charges are bluffs and will stop short it is also true that people have been killed when they mistook a real attack for a bluff charge.
Bears attack when they feel threatened, have their space intruded upon, when they are defending their cubs or kill, or when startled. They also attack when they are hungry, and you have the rare individual who just sees people as food. They can exhibit abnormal behavior as a side effect of the trichinosis parasite that they often harbor like hogs do. This parasitic worm is the reason that bear, and hog meat must always be cooked well done. The trichinosis parasite is a worm that eats into the brain.
The advice to make a lot of noise when going through bear territory is a double edged sword. Sure it can alert bears that want to get out of your way, but it also gives a bear defending his kill time to set up an ambush and if a predatory bear that thinks humans are just another bear goodie is about you are alerting him to your whereabouts while making enough noise to prevent your hearing his approach.
As a lifelong woodsman and hunter I will always travel as silently as possible and if a bear wants trouble I will oblige him. Despite living among grizzly and black bears in Alaska and black bears in Georgia this has not resulted in all the bear attacks proponents of noise making predict.
I view bear spray the way a policeman views his can of mace. It is a useful non-lethal accessory but I don’t see any policemen leaving their gun behind and just carrying a spray can of mace.
Groups that have only one member carrying a gun have had people killed when the man with the gun didn’t fire when he was supposed to or couldn’t fire accurately under pressure. Depending on someone else to save you is foolish.
Let’s Talk Firearms
Statistically, handguns of .44 and .45 caliber have the most success in defending against sudden close range bear attack. This is largely because they are quicker to get into action and fire than a rifle or shotgun and they are less likely to be knocked aside by the bear at mauling range. A pistol can be drawn and fired even if the bear has you down.
I rate the M1911A1 military issue .45 automatic with standard FMJ ball ammo the best handgun for bears followed by .45 Colt revolvers and the American Derringer .45 Colt double Derringer as a back-up. These are proven bear stoppers whose lack of severe recoil lets them be fired fast and accurately by anyone whereas the .44 magnum is too slow for repeat shots and most folks cannot shoot it as well. Use hard cast or FMJ bullets in the .45 Colt as you already have a big enough hole and you need penetration, not bullet expansion.
Knives for bear hunting should be big for two reasons. Big knives are more efficient at skinning and butchering big animals and back in the days of single shot muzzle loaders most experienced bear hunters had come to grips with a wounded bear and killed it with their knife. Many times this was done without injury to the hunter.
Long guns for bear hunting begin with the best bear stopper which is an eight-shot riot shotgun loaded with German Brenneke slugs. This puts a bear down quickly out to 100 yards.
Many Alaskan brown bear guides want their clients to use a .30-06 and shoot for the lungs as that is a proven formula for success. They don’t like to see the big magnums because most people don’t shoot them as well resulting in the guide having to follow up a wounded giant grizzly. A wounded brown bear in the alders is as dangerous as any cape buffalo or other dangerous game in the world.
If you want more power without more recoil there is a way. The standard 405-grain, 1,330 fps .45-70 load has about the same recoil as a .30-06 in rifles of equal weight but the Taylor Knock Out Values of the two are far apart with the .45-70 having more knock out values at 300 yards than the 180-grain
.30-06 does at the muzzle! The 180-grain .30-06 has 20.8 at the muzzle and 15.7 at 300 yards whereas the .45-70 has 34.3 at the muzzle and 25.7 at 300 yards.
Alaskans who have used both the .375 H&H magnum and the .45-70 on bear report that they are equal in stopping power, but the .375 H&H magnum has significantly more recoil making it slower for a second shot.
If you want a bit more power, Remington’s high velocity 405-grain load at 1,600 fps has 42.39 Taylor Knock out values which is more than the .375 H&H magnum has.
For even more energy, Steinel Ammunition is your source for 500-grain ,.45-70 loads at 1,485 fps and their Taylor Knock Out Value is right up there with the .404 Jeffery and the .450-400 nitro at 48.5.
Of all the .45-70 lever action rifles out there I have found the casehardened steel frame octagon barrel Henry to be the best.
If you want to stay with the modern small bore high velocity rounds and want more effective power than the .30-06 then go with the 8mm Mauser and European loads. While the American ammunition companies have reduced the 8mm Mauser to a mere .32 Special, the European loads hit more like a .338 Winchester magnum on game but without the recoil. I can’t even feel the recoil in an unaltered 98K Mauser and the WWII semi-auto G43 has even less recoil. The G43 shown was bought in Alaska where it served well with its 10-shot magazine.
When shooting bears broadside remember that the chest slopes up and everything below the line of the neck is hair so place all your shoulder shots neck high.
Now for the three species of bears in North America.
The first is the polar bear. Its primary food is seals, making it the only bear that is a pure carnivore and not omnivorous. Despite this it has the least reputation as a man-eater. That doesn’t mean it is harmless though. I had a friend who had killed a caribou before the Marine Mammals Act put an end to sport hunting of polar bears. As he was busy skinning the caribou he turned to find a polar bear stalking him. There was no time to get his rifle with the bear almost upon him but fortunately he wore a pistol as well. He made a fast draw and killed the bear at the last possible instant.
At the other end of the spectrum there is the case of the Siberian polar bears working collectively to get a remote village to feed them during the hungry period when the bears are waiting for the sea to freeze over so they can go out and hunt seals. They went into the village begging for food making sure that there were no instances that could frighten the humans. Russians tend to like bears anyway and soon they were being fed cans of condensed milk, the one thing the village had in great abundance. Even when the Russians took the liberty of picking up and cuddling the cubs right in front of the mother there were no problems.
In the days when hunting polar bears was still legal it entailed an arduous journey over floe ice culminating in a stalk. These expeditions could take up to two weeks and success was by no means guaranteed.
Brown and grizzly bears are really the same species and are also the same bear found in Europe. Over in Europe, centuries of intense hunting has made them so wary that one scientist said they should be renamed Ursus Scaredy Catus. They are by no means so timid in North America and many individuals still seem to regard themselves as king of the woods.
Where the black bear may run from dogs the grizzly often becomes enraged at being barked at and sets out to catch and kill the insubordinate dog. Since dogs being chased by enraged grizzly bears tend to run back to their owner this can be highly hazardous to the owner’s health and thus many do not recommend taking dogs around grizzly bears. It is worth noting that the original spelling was grisly as in a grisly murder.
The bears first encountered by white frontiersmen had been having their way with the Indians for so long that they were quite unimpressed by humans and expected them to get out of their way. Many still have that attitude. A lot of maulings are simply a grizzly knocking someone aside with a cuff that would not amount to much on another bear but one that causes serious injury to humans. A few are man eaters.
Unlike the black bear, the grizzly suffers from constant mood swings from happy go lucky to homicidal rage then back to happy go lucky again. You can often observe this with a bear playing with a snowball. If it breaks the bear may get angry and destroy everything in sight then revert back to being happy again.
I had a circus bear trainer once tell me that anyone who thinks they know what a bear is going to do next is wrong because even the bear does not know what he is going to do next. Most grizzly bears don’t want to hurt you, but they are individuals just like humans. Some bears are so mean and dangerous that the other bears take off at the sight of them. Don’t expect bear spray to do anything but make these even madder. A gun is your only protection, and you will probably have to use it if you encounter one of these sore heads. Like a vicious dog, these bears are extremely easy to read.
Tracking and then stalking grizzlies is the most challenging method of hunting them but remember that a bear being pursued may either run or set up an ambush or both if he is aware he is being hunted.
Black bears are the grizzly and polar bears’ smaller cousin. Normally shy and elusive they tend to be benign towards humans with most of the attacks occurring because to bears are frightened and lash out in self-defense. The more they are habituated to humans and lose their fear of them the less likely they are to attack.
Some attacks occur when people push the “Tame” bear much too far. Black bears can be extremely tolerant but like anything else they have their limits. They are very good at living in close proximity to people.
Black bears are hunted over bait, where legal, with dogs which will tree them, again where legal, and by tracking and stalking. Like all bears, if one is shot on a hill or mountainside it will tend to roll to the bottom before trying to run off. Most people have difficulty placing a killing shot in a rolling bear.
Bears are something we share the woods with in many places and like all animals, the more you understand about them, the better.
