I dropped a 45 several months back. It went off and shot my leg. Blew left shinn in two. My guess is a 45 is a pretty good defensive round for shooting a bear….
Davy Crocket killed him a ‘bar when he was only three.
May you inform us as to the make and model? Lots of .45 handguns out there. Not many have a reputation of going off when dropped, anymore.
Or, perhaps it was a really freakish accident, which happen from time to time...
In whatever case, it would be nice to know a bit more.
That sucks about your leg. I hope you are recovering.
However, while a .45 is very effective against a person, I would not want to use it on a bear.
A few years ago, a buddy was here on my place hunting whitetail with a .50 black powder. I was roofing my house just before sunset when I heard a shot. He came back to the house and I asked if he hit it. He says, I’m pretty sure I got him, so I came down off the roof, grabbed a flashlight and my Colt 1911.
It was dark and after a while, I saw two eyes glowing from the flashlight and the beast stood up, looking me directly in my eyes. I drew on him and shot. Nothing happened. I shot again and again. The buck just casually walked away. I thought I was just a terrible shot.
Eventually, we found him dead and loaded him into the tractor bucket and brought him to the house.
As we skinned him, there were multiple .45 slugs that fell out, just trapped between the skin and body cavity. They never penetrated into anything vital, just got stuck there.
Later, telling my FIL about it, he said, yep, a .45 won’t do anything to a deer.
If I had to shoot a bear, I would want something with more punch than that, at least a .357.