The bear was finally driven off when a park ranger shot it in the face with a shotgun slug, wounding it.
OK, that bear was either the most badass bear out there or this reads wrong. How does any creature just get wounded by a shotgun slug to the face?
Angle of the bear skull versus the slug causes the slug to glance off.
But such a slug has plenty of bear kill power barring a fluke angle.
A bear’s skull is very thick and strong; shots often just bounce off.
OK, that bear was either the most badass bear out there or this reads wrong. How does any creature just get wounded by a shotgun slug to the face?
1. The slug only hit a glancing blow to the face, just grazing the skin.
2. The slug hit a non-lethal part of the face, perhaps the nose.
3. The ranger thought he shot it in the face, but the bear moved, or he jerked the trigger, or the slug hit a sapling on the way there, and he missed.
....How does any creature just get wounded by a shotgun slug to the face?...
Hit in the side of the cheek?
Easily, if it isn’t a brain shot they do not die very quickly. Ask any hunter who has shot a deer with half his face blown away, that deer can run for miles.
Many years ago we shot a ring tailed cat in the nose (unintentionally).
He ran off. We found him hours later still alive but near death.
I spend several weeks a year on the Yukon alone with the Bears. Suspended from a shoulder holster around both shoulders is a .500 S & W Magnum at all times. Nearby is a Remington 870 Tactical chambered for 3 “ Magnum rounds. Mines loaded with the triple ought.
Anyone in the outdoors of Alaska un armed is crazy, in my opinion.
The face is not a vital area, the brain/cns/major vascular structures are.