Bear attack, Kenai Peninsula of Alaska, successful use of handgun

[David Thomas]

For those who carry handguns for bear protection (which is not statistically as helpful as pepper spray and not recommended or practiced by state or federal personnel versus large caliber long guns), there’s been a movement away from .44 magnum revolvers to semi-auto Glock handguns in 10 mm or .40 caliber with hard-cast bullets.  The logic being that you get 15 chances to place that non-expanding bullet moderately deep into the bear.  All that seemed to play out this weekend when two hunters were surprised by a brown bear, one was bitten on the foot/lower leg, flipped over, shot himself in the leg (thru-n-thru) but generally shot the bear with his 10mm while his father unloaded his .40-caliber at close range.

https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2024/08/19/troopers-brown-bear-attack-seriously-injured-hunter-kenai-trail/

The injured hunter was alert and articulate and able to video himself while waiting for the helicopter.  They appear to have had trauma first-aid gear with them.

That’s the most common trail I hike in the area – I’ve done a bunch of 40-mile backpacking trips and day hikes and shorter day hikes along there.

I’m guessing they were going for mountain goat which are found in the mountains on each side of that trail.  The season opened for goats the week prior.

That weekend, I was on the roadless, south end of the Peninsula trail building a spur to the Tutka Backdoor Trail.  There were many herds of mountain goats around (when we weren’t in the clouds) and two goat hunters came by, thankful for the new extension to the trail.

[Jon Fong / Flat Cat Gear]

Just curious, workers not wearing visibility gear?

[Dan]

Apologies for the graphic question, but how does that ammunition kill a grizzly quickly enough to save the hunter’s life? Do you need to hit the spine or brain?

[jscott]

“shot himself in the leg (thru-n-thru) but generally shot the bear with his 10mm while his father unloaded his .40-caliber at close range.”

good thing the owner of the Glock didn’t shoot his dad as well, thru-n-thru. And here’s the deal: if you’re being attacked by a bear in the middle of the night, your shot is likely to be a bit off. Your finger is likely to be a bit anxious. And the consequences for those around you be so much more devastating.

I may have misunderstood David’s post, but it seems that the victim managed to shoot himself in the leg with his glock, while his Dad fired his 44 magnum at the bear and drove it off without shooting his son. so, which is the better firearm to have in Alaska?

Where I hike in the Sierra, no firearms are necessary, and indeed are illegal for good reason. If I were hiking in Alaska, I would certainly carry bear spray. I couldn’t kill my dad and uncle Jim and his 16 year old daughter with bear spray. I might with a glock.

what a nightmare! Best  wishes to both of them.

 

 

[Dan]

@jscott, I think the article said that they killed the bear.

[MJ H]

When I saw the title, I thought that a bear had learned how to use a gun.

But I’m glad these guys are O.K.

[Ray J]

If you watch the video, they have done first aid, contacted authorities for an extraction and are about 10 yards from the bear’s body.  Then the injured man started filming while the other man coordinated with rescue.  Both are shook up.

My dad was a USAF Fighter Pilot.  We were in Alaska from 1959 through 1963.  Many of the pilots carried a 44 magnum under their arm.  The thinking being if/when you went down in the tundra, you could kill a bear if it came after you.  Same over the arctic, you could kill the Arctic Great White Killer, the polar bear.  One day one of dad’s fellow pilots did have to bail out of his fighter.  And a bear, I forget but I think dad said a grizzly, did come after the pilot.  He pulled the magnum revolver and commenced shooting.  All it did was piss off the bear.  Once the bear had the pilot’s arm, the pilot stuck the gun in the bears mouth and pulled the trigger, head-shot.   Dad sold the magnum.  He said it was dang uncomfortable in the tiny fighter cockpit, weighed a lot.  Dad was a born crack shot and had spent his first year in the USAF in command of the Air Police at a SAC (nuclear boomer) base.  They had to know how to shoot and hit.  So, he got a 22 Magnum revolver and carried that the rest of the time.  Except in Vietnam.   I still have the magnum.  Dad figured with the 22, he could shoot a rabbit for food while waiting on rescue.  He could do his best to avoid a bear.  He had bear spray and if a bear really got after him, he’d hold fire until the bear had him then do what his fellow flier had done and shoot it in the mouth/head.

These two men were fortunate.

[David Thomas]

jscott:  No one had a .44 magnum revolver.  The father had a .40 caliber handgun.  .40 is spicier than 9 mm but not as much muzzle energy as 10 mm.  Most police and military use 9 mm as it is the most energy that many people can learn to shoot decently.  The 10 mm was developed for the FBI in response to the 1986 Maimi Shootout but the full-powered version was hard for many agents and most all women agents to shoot well so the .40 S&W was developed in a shorter cartridge that wasn’t quite as powerful.

Law enforcement in Alaska leans away from 9 mm and towards .40 or 10mm or .45 in their pistols, not for bears, but because winter clothing (on humans) absorbs quite a bit of bullet energy (a decent backstop for pistols can be made from 40 layers of fleece).

When carried for bear protection, be it in .40 or 10mm, hot loads with hard-cast, non-expanding bullets are used.  The people I know who do that practice with less powerful rounds (because the full power rounds hurt to shoot) and figure that in the moment, the adrenaline will get you through a little pain in your palm.

[Brad W]

Glock 20 10mm with 200gr or 240gr hard cast are very popular where I am for grizzly bear protection.

[David Thomas]

Jon:  Good point on the high-vis gear.  Personally, I was a little surprised hunting season had started (most people hunt moose and that’s much later).  I do try to wear a high-vis orange hat and put something on the dog later in the Fall.  At least we weren’t dressed in white.  Billies and nannies are hard to tell apart – either are legal, but if you pull the trigger on a nanny, you have to skip the next year as an enticement by the state to try to discern which is which and preferentially harvest males.  Point being – hopefully the hunters are glassing, scoping and sussing things out before going blam-blam.  There are no trees or shrubs where the goats are in the summer / fall and the stalks are long are hard and hunters aren’t blasting away like they sometimes do in heavy cover.

Dan: my understanding of the terminal ballistics is that while punching a clean 0.40″ hole with a hot, 700-foot-pound .40 round isn’t nearly as good as a .338 Lapua at 5,000 foot pounds that fragments into multiple wound channels, you get multiple wound channels from some of the other 14 rounds in your magazine.  Some of those to the heart or lungs and they’ll bleed out or if any hit the brain or spine, it’s out of action even sooner.  Out of 30 rounds, if half of them landed, that’s 8 x 1500 (for the 10 mm) + 7 x 700 (for the .40)  = 17,000 foot-pounds which exceeds the energy of three full-on literal elephant gun rounds like a .458.

If you want more on the theory or ballistics of this hot solid rounds for semi-auto pistols, google “Buffalo Bore” which is the premier supplier of such ammo.

[jscott]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/23/travel/sea-lions-monterey-california-beach/index.html

Sorry to get my glocks confused with my magnums. Where I live folks carrying semi automatic guns is common and disasterous. See the above and imagine how someone pulling out a gun would play out. Scroll down a tiny bit to see the video.

[AK Granola]

I’m a weirdo for Alaska; I have never owned nor carried a gun of any kind nor will I. I’m grateful to live in a safe community (for me; not everyone is safe) and will continue to carry bear spray at the ready wherever I hike here. It’s always interesting to read the accounts of bear attacks up here. Circumstances make such a difference. Because I moderate my own behavior as advised, I don’t worry too much about bears. The predatory bear is the only one that gives me pause, but it’s so rare that if it happens, it happens, I accept that. Driving up the haul road or down the Richardson Highway to go hiking – that scares the bejeezus out of me! Statistics back me up on every account.

[David Thomas]

AK Granola:  Yup.  My riff on guns for bear protection is that there are 0.5 human fatalities a year in Alaska on average while drunk-driving deaths average 22 per year.  So before fretting about 10mm versus .44 magnum versus 12-gauge with slugs or a .338; start packing a breathalyzer – it’s 44 times more likely to save our life.

[Luke Schmidt]

Yeah I’ve had multiple car wrecks that were not my fault. No bear attacks yet.

Of course when I’m dressing a caribou up on the mountains a grizzly attack becomes a bit more of a concern….

David and others hit what I think are the relevant points on handguns. Basically they make neat little holes regardless  of size not the massive trauma caused by a rifle or shotgun. So more little holes is better. A smooth shooting 10mm or 9mm is probably better. Either you brain the bear or you hopefully hurt it enough it breaks off.

The other thing this case illustrates is that a handgun gives you the ability to hurt a bear from any angle while it chews on you. Definitely not ideal but potentially useful. In my case IF I am attacked by a bear it will probably be on a hunt (probably while I gut a moose or caribou) and it might very well be on top of me before I draw. So I carry a handgun on hunts even though my rifle would be the preferred choice or a bear spray if I’m not bear hunting the bear.

My rational might be different because I hunt solo and literally have bears in my backyard. If you hike in Yellowstone once a year your risk profile is different. Most people here should grab a bear spray and not sweet the bears.

[Darryl C]

Handguns to the rescue again….

https://www.outdoorlife.com/survival/idaho-bowhunter-grizzly-bear-attack/

[AK Granola]

I’ll take my chances with the bears. Humans with guns are so much scarier.

“In 2021, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 48,830 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., according to the CDC” (Pew)

“there have only been 180 fatal human/bear conflicts in North America since 1784.” (BatchGeo)

 

[Jerry Adams]

a majority of gun deaths were suicide.  And a majority of the remainder were killing a relative or friend or other unjustified

this is chaff isn’t it? : )

[AK Granola]

Bear attack stories on a backpacking light forum are definitely chaff.

[Darryl C]

Ak I think I disagree with your logic but maybe not your conclusion.  That said at a recent block party I was talking to my neighbor who has done a fair amount of long hikes including some in Alaska and Canada. We were discussing grizzly bears back in Wa.  I mentioned I had some friends who brought guns with them in Alaska  and he said bear spray is so much more effective.  I said I wasn’t sure I fully agreed with that theory. We both have no fear of local black bears.  So regardless of your position on guns for protection it does seems to be relevant topic for BPL.

[Jerry Adams]

Probably bear spray is better, but that’s for each person to decide.  Good to have specific real world examples of what works.

[jscott]

 

here’s from David’s original post.

“semi-auto Glock handguns in 10 mm or .40 caliber with hard-cast bullets.  The logic being that you get 15 chances to place that non-expanding bullet moderately deep into the bear”

I get that. Pull the trigger and you fire off 15 rounds. If you’re dad’s also trying to shoot the bear, hope to not hit him. And hope to not hit yourself! But it’s all happening in milliseconds. David complained that I didn’t know my glock from my magnum. True! Still, from what I can tell, my point still goes unaddressed: are we sure that rapid firing guns won’t inadvertently cause more harm to those around us and ourselves than repel or kill an attacking bear?

Gun owners often dismiss non gun owners comments because these last don’t know the calibers of guns. I suppose not knowing the engine model of the car that ran you down in the sidewalk invalidates your legal complaint as well.

But more: given the statistics above, are we sure that these guns won’t wound or kill more people than bears in the wilderness?

I get it. If I was hiking into grizzly country, I’d want protection. I wouldn’t care about statistics. Still, here’s a statistic I’d like to hear: how many people warded off a potentially deadly bear attack with their rapid fire gun? That’s not rhetorical. I really don’t know. And how many people are shot and killed by accident in the wilds of Alaska by these guns?

In short: if the aim is to save lives…are we sure semi automatics are the best way forward? Maybe! And again, I might well choose a semi automatic if I were to visit grizzly territory. but I know myself. I would keep it empty of bullets until the situation loomed, and then hand the gun off to someone else with experience. otherwise I’d have no business being in that situation.

Those who will take this last honest statement and use it to dismiss my concerns miss the point entirely. Everyone thinks they’re competent until the bear attacks.

[AK Granola]

Okay just to chaff it up even more, police kill more people in Alaska than bears do, by quite a margin. Seems like a weekly story this summer.

I’m sure there are plenty of stories of people warding off bears with guns and also many with bear spray. And thousands more by avoiding contact by making lots of noise, keeping a clean camp, and not being around food-conditioned bears. We do what we can here in Alaska trying to get new people to do the right thing, but it’s a sisyphean task. They really think we’re a bunch of yahoos who haven’t a clue and just put their food in their tents with the 5 year old, etc. We do what we can. And then someone shoots the problem bear.

[jscott]

Point taken. I don’t think Alaskans are Yahoos. I don’t dismiss yours or David’s insights especially because I know nothing about semi automatic guns except that they’re used in, let’s say, non-bear related situations here in the benighted lower 48. so you might see my concerns.

Again, if and when I enter grizzly territory, I’d likely choose to carry a gun. that’s a reasonable response. Wait, I’d likely carry about ten cans of bear spray.  That’s reasonable as well.

and then have to call for a helicopter to carry out my pepper spray disabled companions when a chipmunk gnawed at my tent…

[Jerry Adams]

that is definitely chaffing it up ak

I will have to add sisyphean to my working vocabulary.  I need to study greek mythology more.

[DirtNap]

These arguments always end up the same so I’ll just talk about my kit. I carry 357 mag in a UL wheel gun (SW 360pd scandium) in the bear country in the lower 48. 16-17 oz fully loaded. Only carries 5 bullets though. Carried bear spray for years before that. I sleep better with the gun is all I can say. I’ve been around no less than 3 accidental deployments of bear spray in those years, very not fun, and no accidental deployment of bullets. YMMV of course.

Been really looking at upgrading to a lightweight 10mm like the Springfield XD Elite 3.8″. Rated for hot loads so no need to upgrade the barrel like on Glocks.

Wheel guns are great, simple and hard to accidentally deploy. Only safety is the hard pull on first shot. But that gun is NOT fun to shoot because it’s so light. 357 is nice because you can load 38 special for the nightstand and 357 mag heavy grain for bear country. Weirdly it’s my wife’s favorite gun.

10mm semi is a gun you have to stay up on maintenance and training. Way more moving parts and you can’t just hand somebody one and say shoot. But recoil is so much easier to handle although I’m sure Buffalo bore hard grain is still not really fun to shoot!

Wife still brings spray. Importantly, we TRAIN with bear spray too with older cans every year. Not just spraying, but access/holstering, best practices, holster location etc. seen too many drop, go hiss or deploy in people pockets and ruin trips and gear!

Take what you feel comfortable with and most importantly, you TRAIN ON.

[Author]

Posts