Posted on 04/13/2022 5:25:56 AM PDT by marktwain
I have been researching the effectiveness of pistols when they are fired as a defense against bears for several years. The research started as an attempt to find cases where pistols were ineffective.
In October of 2016, a poster on freerepublic.com claimed (post 28 at the link) that there were numerous failures when people attempted to use pistols as a defensive tool against bears. The author knew there were several cases where the use of a pistol resulted in an effective defense.
Because access to handguns, bear spray, knives, rifles, and shotguns all involve similar problems, only cases where a handgun was actually fired are considered. None of these systems do any good if they cannot be accessed in time to be used to stop an attack.
Months, then years of searching the Internet, books, and official sources for documented cases of failure found three documented failures and over a hundred documented cases of success (there were 10 cases where combinations of pistols and other potentially lethal items were used).
In June of 2021, the count of documented cases where pistols or handguns alone were fired in defense against bears stood at 104. One of those was discovered to be a duplicate and corrected. Since then, another 20 cases have been found. Those cases raise the number to 123. Of the 123 cases, three documented cases exist where the firing of the handgun did not stop the attack by driving off or killing the bear or bears involved.
When the number of cases reached 100, publishing the whole on the Internet at AmmoLand became time-consuming and unwieldy. With this update, additional cases will be published as time permits. The statistics will be updated. The last update will be available, but not incorporated into a
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
Excellent work, Dean.
L
Ping to DesertRhino.
I’m curious to know the calibers of the 3 failures.
Bear country (ID) for me is a Glock 20, 10mm. Nothing smaller.
Read the article.
What kinds of encounters do people have with bears?
Are they surprise attacks or do people typically see them coming?
Here is a link to an article about the three cases.
Black bear are retarded.
Yessir. I have a 29.
Are they surprise attacks or do people typically see them coming?
It is a mix. Most surprise attacks are from grizzly bears.
Most black bear and polar bears are seen coming.
Even most grizzly bear attacks are noticed a few seconds before the bear can make contact.
In very few cases, attacks occur with such surprise that no defensive tool can be accessed before contact.
Black bear usually haul tail, unless they have cubs or are starving.
I have ran off a couple three just by shouting, waving arms, etc. One of the dumbest animals ever. Don’t get me wrong, they can kill you, but they are retarded.
Not so much retarded as having a keen sense of who’s on top of the food chain. They have good self preservation instincts and boogie on out of there unless you get between mama and cubs
Ran into one taking a dump in the Gros Ventre in Wyoming. You’d a thought he was getting whipped. Grizz on the other hand.....
I never saw a black bear during decades of hunting in Ohio, Indiana, NC, TN, and GA.
But a couple of years ago in N Florida, I saw one, and it scared me. I was deer gun hunting in a tree with a climbing stand, and suddenly about 40 yards to the side, a bear head popped up, sniffing, trying to find me (heavy palmetto underbrush). I didn’t think he saw me, and he immediately went back down and I couldn’t see him. I never heard him come or go. About 5 minutes later, he had circled in behind me and startled me with a loud quick challenging growl! I never heard him come in, and he was only about 20 yards from me by then! I turned in my seat (about 15 feet up, and facing the tree as I hunted the swamp beyond the tree, the direction whence the bear had come originally) and looked at him, and he looked at me, and then, poof, he was gone. I still didn’t hear him going, either! If I had been hunting, walking, relieving myself, etc. on the ground, well, that would have indeed been frightening. Was he curious, or pissed that I was in his area? I really didn’t want to discuss it with him. And btw, some really nasty boars are a danger too, on the ground in N Florida.
So now we can finally get the honest truth from an eyewitness ...
Does a bear really $h!t in the woods?
You forgot Trash Pandas, (raccoons are bears too)
Like a big dog!
The vast majority black bear sows with cubs will not attack a man, even when the cubs are bawling for help.
This was shown by bear researchers as they routinely handled black bear cubs in the wild.
There are a few exceptions, of course, but they are very rare.
If you run from mama or try to climb a tree, you may trigger the "fleeing prey" or "fleeing combatant" instinct.
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