I live in a location where there are many black bears. I shot one using a .270 Win rifle, hitting him in the neck and virtually breaking his neck. Gutted out, he weighed in at 165 pounds and was 4.5 years old as the game warden got my permission to remove a tooth for analysis.
Beginning several years ago, a family member who lives nine miles from here was putting bird seed out to feed the many wonderful species of birds we have here. On more than one occasion, this person observed a monster black bear eating the bird food. The bear had destroyed several bird feeders.
Not to be outdone, this relative dug with a post hole digger a hole below frost level and installed a 10" diameter concrete sonatube footing, reinforced with 1/2" rebar. He carefully planted his new 2" diameter galvanized iron pipe, plumb in the center of the footing, making sure the concrete entered up from the bottom of the open pipe. At the top, he branched off the 2" iron pipe with several smaller pipes, 1.5", 1.25", 1" and .75" respectively to essentially have a 'tree' of pipes onto which he hung no less than four individual feeders. This worked extremely well also, because the squirrels and chipmunks could not climb the freshly-painted shiny dark gray pipe.
This feeder lasted about two weeks. He came out one morning, walking the dog and found the feeder literally bent over and several cross-pipes near the top, completely torn off and located on the opposite side of his house.
At this point, he contacted the local game warden.
The local warden came and admitted this person did a terrific job at 'attempting' to keep the bear off the feeders. The warden went on to say there is a huge (approximate weight 450 pound) bear that has been frequenting the entire area. The bear is so large, bear hunters using dogs to tree the bear stopped using the dogs, as the bear was not frightened one bit by the barking nuisances, but, instead, the bear would simply take a swipe with its sharp claws and kill any dogs that the hunters were using to tree the bear. The bear had no reason to climb a tree as the bear was so large, it learned how to defend itself by killing the dogs that were chasing it.
I got permission from this person to hunt the property in search of this bear and my firearms of choice were a 12 gauge with a rifled slug barrel and saboted slugs and when I was handgun hunting it, my 500 S&W loaded at maximum load with Barnes 275g Triple Shock X Pistol Bullets (XPB). Even with those guns and that load, I was still a bit nervous, wondering what will happen when I see the bear and take a shot at it! In some ways, it is fortunate that I did not run into the bear on my many hunting days I spent there, as I don't feel like being a statistic.
When I read that people are using a 9mm to shoot bears, I laugh. Yes, you can kill one with a .22, if you hit it just right. I have seen .22 bullets ricochet off the thick head of woodchucks when they were not shot at just the right angle to penetrate.
What does one do for an encore when the 9mm bullet doesn't hit just right and perhaps just grazes the bear's flesh, or the bullet ricochets off the bear's skull where there may happen to be some thick bone at just the wrong angle?
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