357 vs grizzly

[Rexster]

The advisability of a .357 is also going to depend on how one chooses to use it. I can virtually always have an SP101 with me here in Texas, along with another handgun. If I suddenly found myself invited to Alaska, upon reaching the wild country, I would swap the antipersonnel ammo for hardcast hunting loads, which I have indeed tried and found controllable. A small DA sixgun that can be inside my sleeping bag surely beats no handgun at all if I can't reach my Winchester Model 70 Safari Express at a given moment in time. I reckon it would be nice to have my Ruger Bisley loaded with hot .45 Colt ammo, too.

I have never walked among large bears, but hunt people for a living, wear a badge, and will usually have two handguns and a shotgun on duty, so the principle is the same. If an underpowered handgun is the best one has at the moment, use it in nasal spray mode, whether the opponent is human or ursine.

Edited to add: I really do want one of those Ruger SRH Alaskans in .45 Colt/.454 Casull, when money in my pocket coincides with availability of the sixgun.

 

[Surefire]

.357 IMO is a MININUM for a SMALL black bear. And only then if you don't have a rifle on you.

If we are talking grizzly (especially the larger Kodiaks), only a rifle round larger than .30-06 should be considered as primary defense. The minimum backup pistol for grizzley, IMO, that most people can control is a .44 magnum loaded with as heavy bullets as possible. The .454 Casull is a better backup, as are the .500 magnums, but recoil starts becoming a factor (at least for me) with the .454 Casull and higher.

To me the .44 magnum, as a BACKUP only, makes the most sense. For many shooters it offers the best combo of controllability and power.

 

[sonier]

real simple, the 357 magnum when it was the strongest handgun in its day took down many grizzlys. its just not the ideal choice anymore. Oh and for black bear a 357 magnum wont think twice on putting it down. Black bears just dont get big and scary as people think. Think of a hog yes your normal butcher pig the breeding boars can get over 500 pounds and a .22lr can kill them. black bears dont get much bigger than 500 pounds. Bears arnt surrounded by reactive armor or depleted uranium. 357 magnum is probally the best carry choice there is for black bear. And It does have the potential to stop a grizzly bear it has done it many times in history.

Unless surefire from florida has seen many of those mythical 1000 pound balck bears down there i wouldnt worry.

 

[popbang]

You have a 45-70, so the 357 would be your back-up. Well, to me I would rather have the 357 then no back-up. A 200 grain hard cast bullet is nothing to sneeze at.

Is it ideal? No, but if it is what you have then you use. I lived in Fairbank 6 years and Anchorage another 5 years. I went hunting quite a bit out of Valdez along the coast. I carried a 45-70, and most of the time I didn't take a back-up gun with me. That gun went everywhere with me. Guess I was foolish, but I never got ate.

If you are looking for suggestions of what to take I would say 44 Mag or more.

 

[KodiakBeer]

Actually, I'm real fond of the Guide Gun as a carry gun for fishing trips and what have you, but it's not a great hunting rifle because it lacks range.
You might want to consider buying a good 30.06 and forget the handguns.

 

[sonier]

get a good autoloader 30/06

 

[CHEVELLE427]

my dad hunted Alaska many years ago , and there was a story about a bear that killed a ranger, when they killed the bear they found some of the ranger and 6 357 mag rounds in the bear. JUST AN FYI

 

[Cocked & Locked]

oh yeah!

I love bear threads



minimum

 

[Armored farmer]

My thoughts on the .357 mag: $.02 worth.
Bare minimum for whitetail hunting. Been there done that about ten times before I got a .45colt.
However....I'm not gonna carry a .45colt day after day. That is why I bought a sp101 for ccw.
whatever the threat, better to have a small .357 on the hip than a big ol' hogleg back at the house.
IMHO

 

[DenaliPark]

I'm about to move to alaska, and am in the process of picking up a 45-70 guide gun for hunting with but should I find myself in a situation with such a predatory animal with for whatever the reason may be my rifle is not of use would a gp100 loaded with 200gr hardcast bullets be enough to stop a grizzly?

Maybe, maybe not. You may be able to stop a bear with a 328 gr hard cast .44 magnum, then again, you may not! Truth is, if you need the handgun to stop a bruin(black or grizzly)you're likely to have the animal on top of you by the time you get the gun into action. A 200 gr hard cast should have no difficulty penetrating the scull of a grizzly at such close quarters, then again, if you're aim is off it may well not.

 

[Gryffydd]

when they killed the bear they found some of the ranger and 6 357 mag rounds in the bear. JUST AN FYI

This tells us nothing. For all we know all 6 rounds hit the bear in non-vital areas and a 44 mag would have done no better.

 

[ArchAngelCD]

To those who said we've had enough bear posts, no one is forcing you to play.

I don't know about the OP but I was wondering about the same question and I felt a bit disappointed by the answers so far, where the prevailing opinion is 357 mag is not enough but fails to make a specific recommendation. The OP already has a 45-70 rifle and is looking for some clear advice on the best handgun should his rifle not be usable for any reason.

duns,
No need to get upset or anything else you were thinking of at the time. I just did a quick search of only this section of the forum and used the words "bear protection" the the search yielded SEVEN PAGES of threads. This has been done over and over again with the last thread only a week or so old and the last post in that thread was made yesterday. It's still on the first page of the forum for goodness sakes. So, no reason to chastise me or anyone else for saying, "another bear thread."

So sorry you are disappointed in our, or should I say my answer...

 

[R.Clem]

I know a fellow in Talkeetna, AK who used to carry a .357 while fishing. He had a confrontation with a bear and managed to come out on top. He shot the bear 6 times and had to run and dodge while he reloaded and then shot the bear 4 more times before it collapsed from the shots. The bear was never more than 20 feet away. The load was 8 grains of Unique under a 160 grain hard cast (Linotype) bullet. The bear died less than 6 feet from his feet.
This fellow now carries a .454 Casull with hard cast a 330 grain slug.
His .357 is now for plinking only.
I really like the .357, I have 2, but for even black bear, I don't see them as adequate.

Ray

 

[CHEVELLE427]

This tells us nothing. For all we know all 6 rounds hit the bear in non-vital areas and a 44 mag would have done no better.

tells me would of should of could of,

357 didn't work .

one would also think a ranger in the wilderness might be able to shoot what he aims at,

I'm sure if we search we can find some larger guns have failed to kill bears as well. but the ??? was is a 357 good enough. again might ,might not be good enough.

have heard of bears killed with a BOW AND ARROW so who knows just what is the ideal bear gun

 

[Deltaboy1984]

IT will work but I would want a 44!

http://www.leverguns.com/articles/taylor/357magnum.htm

 

[6-gunfun]

i dont live (or even hunt for that matter) in bear country so take this as you will.my uncle went black bear hunting in michigan. one day he got put up a tree by a female black bear she followed right up after him and he unloaded his colt .45 sa into her head it didnt fase her it took another 6 bullets to kill her after making sure she was dead they checked and she had 10 holes in her out of 12.....so you tell me is a .357 enough?

 

[fourdollarbill]

I'm a big 357mag fan and I have read near 10 threads on this subject. At first I found myself wanting to defend the 357 mag vs bear. After a few threads I realized that if I was moving into bear country I would ask the locals including the rangers what the best line of defense is. Similar to a fishing trip in another state in a type of water you never fished before. Do you take the bait that you like best or do you stop at the local tackle shop near the new fishing place and ask for the best bait?
If I asked my neighbor for the best bait to take to the Niagra River for Browns he would say "worms and a Zebco 202 is all you'll ever need"

 

[Cosmoline]

The grizzly bear is too heavy to escape up a tree like its smaller cousins the brown bear and black bear when threatened, hence it will usually stand its ground and fight it out

?? The "griz", ursus arctos horribilis, is just the inland variation of the coastal brown bear. It's *SMALLER*, not larger, and has a reputation for being more aggressive and meaner than the larger coastal brown bears. It's a well-earned reputation. Probably because of the diet of roots and angry squirrels instead of gourmet salmon feasts. Most encounters in SE and SC AK are with small black bear, which are almost always harmless and NOT appropriate to shoot in DLP. Second most frequent encounters are coastal brown bears while you're both salmon fishing. Again these are almost always not encounters where you need to shoot. The exception is if you're being charged at close quarters by a brown bear sow protecting cubs. Most maulings are the result of precisely that encounter. Run-ins with grizzly bears in the interior is less common because they're spread out more and there are far fewer people around. They can lead to dicey situations and there have been some very brutal maulings that cross the line into predation. But that's not an everyday issue for most folks.

Given that background and the typical lay of the land, your biggest defensive weapon is your ears and what's between them. Don't go in guns blasting every time you see some bear. But if you DO have to use a weapon DLP it's liable to be an unexpected and fast encounter. So whatever you carry, make sure you're very familiar with it and a very good shot with it. If you're far better and more practiced with a .357 than a .454 Casull, bring the .357 over the Casull. A .357 180 or 200 grain hardcast might be enough if loaded hot, drawn fast and fired square, but a .454 you miss or hit poorly with won't be. Though of course bring the long gun over both--if possible.

 

[snooperman]

Cosmoline, what I said about the Grizzly bear not being..

able to climb trees is true and I was referring to his smaller cousins in the lower 48 that can climb trees to escape. It is obvious that the Alaskan brown bears are all of the same species and what makes one larger is their diet. Most of the information that I gave came from a book on North American big game animals. There is much misinformation about Grizzlies. The fact that they can sprint 33 miles/ hour up a hill leaves little chance for a human to "just leave" and things will be O.K. shows a lack of understanding about the behavior of this animal. I Stand by what I wrote earlier and taken from my book. Also , the Russian brown bear is a member of this specie along with the Alaskan Kodiak bear that lives on the island and is isolated . These animals migrated to this continent when the mongoloid migration took place about 12,000 years ago , and came from Russia. The largest Bear on our continent IS NOT the Alaskan brown bear that lives on the coast as has been misstated on this thread, it is the N.A Polar bear according to my book.My 2 cents.

 

[KodiakBeer]

It's debatable whether the brown or polar bear are the largest bear. If you go by length or hide measurement, then it's the polar bear. If you go by weight, then it would be the brown bear.
Polar bears are lanky, while browns can be hawgs, especially in the fall.

The "brown bears" in the lower 48 are black bears and should properly be called cinnamon bears. A completely different animal. There are also blue and white black bears (google Kermodes bear and glacier bear), but they're all "black bears".

 

[Cosmoline]

The fact that they can sprint 33 miles/ hour up a hill leaves little chance for a human to "just leave" and things will be O.K. shows a lack of understanding about the behavior of this animal.

Of course you can just leave. That's the standard practice in fact for both humans and bears. Otherwise there would be a dozen maulings a day here.

 

[Deaf Smith]

Ocelot,

Since you will have a .45/70 keep it handy at all times.

The .357 magnum, stuck in a Bear's mouth, eye, or ear, should do the trick.

But keep that .45/70 handy!

Deaf

 

[R.Clem]

The "brown bears" in the lower 48 are black bears and should properly be called cinnamon bears. A completely different animal. There are also blue and white black bears (google Kermodes bear and glacier bear), but they're all "black bears".

A few years ago that statement was true, then along came the U.S. Department of Fish & Wildlife with their "great idea" to repopulate the western states where brown bear used to roam. Now we have the hump back "cinnamon" bear, the locals here refer to them as grizzlies as they are from B.C. Canada, I would imagine they are correct. We also have black bear in many diffrent shades, black, brown, and cinnamon, with some even multi colored.

Ray

 

[snooperman]

The color of their coat is determined by their diet.

Alaskan "brown" bears are not all " brown" either as it wanders from place to place in search of food in different habitats it eats different food at different times of the year and the coat color changes from light brown to dark brown to gray in color. The same is true for the bears in the lower 48 as well. I have seen black beers on my farm at different times of the year with a brown coat color.

 

[LeonCarr]

I wish I was moving to Alaska. It would give me a reason to buy a .375 H&H. I would use one of those or a shotgun loaded with slugs.

Just my .02,
LeonCarr