by Jim Kerrigan

Created on: May 09, 2010

Bears are mammals and they breathe air and eat food just like you or I. They do have a body mass much greater than you or I and so they have a built in resistance to being struck that is greater than yours or mine.

For this reason alone weapons used effectively against human beings will have a lesser effectiveness when used against bears. Bears have greater muscle mass; they have greater bone density; they have heavily matted fur; not to mention hands with five knives attached to their fingers with enough force to pull your head off.

Before we go on any further have to state a distinction here because this article is dealing with “what does it take to kill a bear” I assume that we are talking about both hunting and defending ourselves from bears.

Bears are difficult to kill quickly. In a self defense application killing quickly is what we want. In the case of hunting killing quickly is the humane and professional obligation of a hunter. But herein is the problem. While hunting bear I would assume that we are holding a rifle and a powerful one at that; something along the lines of a 45/70 to get the penetration necessary to hit vital organs. If we are defending ourselves from a bear then we might not have a powerful rifle since the bear encounter occurred while we weren’t hunting them.

This self-defense mode leads us to handguns, which against bears are a scary thought. However, the bear can be stopped by two different handguns but they are used differently.

One the magnum handgun: these have the power to penetrate (when used with hard lead bullets) to hit vital organs and are extremely effective in the case of a head shot. Their high energy and hard bullets hit hard and drive deeply into the animal’s body.

Two the large bore automatic: These have less power than magnum handguns however they hold a lot more bullets and fire faster and can put more lead on target than magnum handguns can. Large caliber auto-loading handguns can have a better effect when loaded with heavy hard lead bullets just like magnum handguns do.

Basically if you want to kill a bear other than having him bleed slowly to death, after he has killed you, you have to destroy his central nervous system which means his brain or his spine. Second to this would be his heart and circulatory system. Either way you are destroying heavy bone or penetrating a lot of fur bone and muscle.

In the end bears die from the same injuries that we do it’s just that inflicting them upon them takes a great deal of energy or in the case of a head shot on a charging bear a great deal of luck.

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