Posted on 11/13/2019 7:19:13 AM PST by marktwain
Details of .22 Pistol Defense Failure against Polar Bear in Norway; iStock-940461304
I suspect much of the mythology about the difficulty of penetrating bear skulls with bullets is based on the position of a bear's brain inside of those skulls. The volume of a large bear's brain is a little more or less than a pint (473 ml). The volume of a large bear's head is about 2 1/2 gallons (9.46 l) or more. The brain, to many, is unexpectedly low and narrow. It is easy to shoot a bear in the head and miss the brain. It is easy to shoot a bear in the eye and miss the brain. It is easy to shoot a bear between the eyes and miss the brain if you are a little bit above the mark.
There is quite a bit of fur, skin, muscle, and fat surrounding a bear's skull.
Some detailed pictures of a carved polar bear skull from Nunavut have been posted on facebook. The pictures make it relatively easy to show where a polar bear's brain lies, and how to aim to hit it.
In this photograph of the skull, taken from above, you can see how narrow the brain case is. It lies entirely in back of the eye sockets. It is narrow enough, that viewed from above, you can see it does not extend to the area directly behind each eye socket.
Carved Polar Bear Skull Shows Where to Aim
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
Better to shoot the spine on the neck as it paralyzes instantly.
I’ll just use Kung Foo
Of course, if you hit the exact middle (between the eyes shot) you will hit the thickest part of the most prominent bone - with the added “feature” of the deflecting when it lands “just a little bit sideways” from dead-on-middle.
See the article.
"H.V. Stent seems to have one of the best descriptions of the event on the Internet. From “Grizzly Guns” by H.V. Stent:
Bella Twin, an Indian girl, and her friend Dave Auger were hunting grouse near Lesser Slave Lake in northern Alberta. The only gun they had was Bella’s single-shot bolt-action .22 Rimfire rifle. They were walking a cutline that had been made for oil exploration when they saw a large grizzly following the same survey line toward them. If they ran, the bear would probably notice them and might chase, so they quietly sat down on a brush pile and hoped that the bear would pass by without trouble. But the bear came much too close, and when the big boar was only a few yards away, Bella Twin shot him in the side of the head with a .22 Long cartridge. The bear dropped, kicked and then lay still. Taking no chances, Bella went up close and fired all of the cartridges she had, seven or eight .22 Longs, into the bear’s head. That bear, killed in 1953, was the world-record grizzly for several years and is still high in the records today."
But if your shoot a polar bear:
Who will starve due to all that global warming melting the ice?
Who will appear in all those cute Coca-Cola Christmas adverts?
Nerves of steel!
Why is the reference material a carving of a model of a polar bear skull and not a real skull or replica of one? This seems a bit weird when trying to convey biology facts.
That’s a beautiful work of art. Here are more pictures:
Because it is a carved polar bear skull, not a carving of a polar bear skull.
It is carved in such a way as to show the inside of the brain case and inside of the nasal cavity.
An uncarved skull does not show these places, especially the brain case, nearly as well.
Perhaps - if the attacking bear gives you that vantage angle......
Im sure i will find this information life saving when i encounter a polar bear out here on the Oklahoma tundra while hunting musk oxen or carabo.
Bears are like Rev. Al - big head, tiny brain.
Good to know if I’m ever hunting polar bears with a .22.
So similar to the genus demonratuscommiescumwittlessminorus except that the Bear has 3000 times the size and functionality.
My take is the bear would be repulsed by the stink in my pants and just run off. AND i truly doubt my nerves would be steady enough to even hit that bear let alone a perfect shot. I bet if you polled all the dead bear victims who had guns they would say the same....
A previous ice sheet once covered NE Missouri as close as Rolla, which is about a two hour drive west of St. Louis. A big if at this point is whether the next glaciation is imminent, as charting of previous events suggests through extrapolation.
For the last fifty years the corn belt extended northward. That trend appears to have come to an abrupt halt. Barley and Oats will once again reign as an appropriate crop for short summers of less warmth. For now, Corn and Soy still in the field, delays planting of the winter Wheat crop. If it does not happen within the proper timing window, Wheat would then be the follow-on shortage.
Got recipe for Polar Bear???
When I moved to Alaska I was surprised how popular the AR15 in .223 is. I had assumed that most outdoorsmen would go for heavier calibers in light bolt guns. I was wrong.
Having said that, Most fishing boats I’ve been aboard in Southeast AK have a .45-70 or 12ga aboard. If you ask what the best bear protection is, one of those two will certainly be the top choice. For hikers, fishermen and as backup for hunters, heavy pistols in .44 magnum and up are ubiquitous but the 10mm auto is rapidly gaining popularity.
The consensus seems to be that bear spray only works if the bear isn’t really serious about attacking.
Not one person who was armed with an appropriate firearm was injured.
They ruled the one case where one person was killed and one injured, where they were armed with a .22 pistol, the people were not adequately armed.
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