In the debate about effective defense methods against aggressive bears, some people claim extreme speed and accuracy are essential to stopping a bear attack with firearms. Here are some quotes.
From Efficacy of Firearms for Bear Deterrence in Alaska:
The need for split-second deployment and deadly accuracy make using firearms difficult, even for experts.
Many experts seem to favor bear spray. One drawback of firearms they cite is the inability of many shooters to make accurate, quick-kill shots under the extreme stress of a bear attack.
From backcountrychronicles.com:
If you shoot something as big as a grizzly bear and are not lucky enough to penetrate their skull or clip the spinal chord on the 1st shot, it might just piss them off. The average elk can run 100 yards after a double lung shot, so how long do you think grizz can continue to whip your ass before it dies? The bear will eventually die, but you will still die first.
This argument appears to be based on conjecture and myth, with very little data. Most readers have access, over the Internet, to the same data as this correspondent. All cases where a handgun was fired in defense against a bear, which could be documented, are included. This was done to prevent selection bias. There are 174 cases which have been published so far. They are all available on AmmoLand, most with links to original sources.
To test the theory of the necessity of a central nervous system hit, delivered very fast (roughly less than three seconds) the incidents were evaluated to determine if both a central nervous system hit was required and the hit had to be delivered very rapidly. Most people can learn to deliver shots on a close range moving target in under three seconds with a little practice. Upland bird hunters do it routinely. Many police basic shooting requirements, demand speeds of less than two seconds for two shots at close range, including drawing from a holster.
There were 13 incidents where a central nervous system hit was delivered very rapidly and stopped the attack. Here is a classic example from Alaska in 1969:
--when there was a sudden sound from the brush, combined with
a blur, and time abruptly froze:...a large dark shape in mid-air, teeth and claws, eyes out of a nightmare, my mind in a state of cold unnatural calm as two hands, right and left, met one grasping the other and then there was a loud explosion and I was rolling to the side, onto my feet, gun I did not recollect drawing in my hands, swinging onto target again, half-way through the trigger pull, double action as before...
--Only to realize I was looking down at the grizzly, that it was lying at my feet, dying, paralyzed by a shattered neck thanks to Smith & Wesson and one of the hot handloads my husband had made for me. There were five left in the gun. The rest were up at the cabin.
Dolly Walker, the woman who shot the bear in the incident above, said she would have had several seconds more warning if she had not been deep in thought, distracted, thinking of a painting she was working on.
There were 117 incidents where the attack was stopped by a hit or hits, without a quick central nervous system hit. Here is an example from Wyoming, 2010:
The person in the lead shouldered his Savage 99, chambered in .308, loaded with five rounds of reloads with 150-grain Game King bullets. The bear appeared only 15 feet from them. At 8-10 feet, he fired. The bear stumbled and went down, slightly to his right, at the edge of the road. As the bear started to get up, he fired a second shot and his partner opened up with the .41 magnum.
There were 21 incidents where warning shots were effective. Here is an example from Canada in 2010:
Mr. Lorenz lifted the gun and set it off, just four feet above her head. The shot was enough to startle the bear and make her turn in the opposite direction.
There were 8 incidents were warning shots were ineffective. Three of the four pistol defense failures fall into this category. Here is the recently discovered failure from 1986 to drive a polar bear away with warning shots:
Four days later and 4 km SW, a bear with a red stain on its forehead, which may have been the bear spray, charged a group of 12 people. The bear ignored both “cracker shells” and shots from a .44 calibre handgun. The people involved were forced to climb a nearby tower or enter an adjacent building.
No one was injured in the 1986 incident. The bear was not shot.
Several warning shot failures became successful stops when hits were made. Some cases fall in more than one category.
The remaining pistol defense failure could be considered a warning shot failure. It is unclear if the bear was hit by any of the rounds fired. It was not considered a warning shot failure because the shooter said he intended to hit the bear.
Miller managed to pull out his .357 Magnum revolver and squeeze off a shot, possibly grazing the animal. Then he fell onto his stomach, dug his face into the dirt and covered his neck.
The bear went for his exposed right arm, gnawing and clawing it and chipping the bone off the tip of his elbow. The attack lasted 10 to 15 seconds, then the animal lumbered away.
As Miller rolled over and was getting to his knees, the bear, only about 40 yards away, came at him again.
He managed to fire two more shots, but with his right arm badly injured he thinks he missed the bear. Then he lay still as the animal gnawed and clawed at him.
21 incidents did not include sufficient information to determine if a fast central nervous system hit was the deciding factor.
The reader may consider the incidents themselves and make their own determination. It appears successful stopping of bear attacks, without fast central nervous system hits, occurred (117 + 21) 138 times. Fast central nervous system hits occurred 13 times. Of the 151 recorded successful uses of firearms ( incidents without sufficient information not included), fast central nervous system hits happened about 8.6% of the time.
In over 90% of recorded bear defense cases with a firearm, where a pistol was fired, fast central nervous system hits were not required to stop the attack.
The only failure where a person was killed was the .22 pistol against a polar bear in the Svalbard Archipelago in 1995. None of the other three failures include evidence the bear involved was hit.
It is impossible to know the precise level of effectiveness of bear deterrents. Most uses of deterrents are never reported. Reporting is highly biased toward failures of bear defensive methods. Bear inflicted injuries and fatalities are widely reported. If a bear is shot at, and runs off, there is little to report. This means deterrents tend to be much more effective than seen in studies.
©2024 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
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