Wilderness camping and gun safety
When camping as the lone camper with miles of wilderness around, do you feel safer with a loaded firearm handy? Or is having the magazine ready to slide in a better option? Thank you for any thoughts....
Forum Discussion
silverbullet555 wrote:wapiticountry wrote:
In a true grizzly vs someone with a handgun death match, the bear is a prohibitive favorite. Your average 9mm will just aggravate him. so you need to get a much bigger gun.
When he is charging you at 40 MPH he will cover 100 yard in 5 seconds. Biggest problem with that is in the wilderness you will not see him until he is 20 yards away which will give you less than 1 second to draw, aim, fire and get the heck out of the way. Another problem is you have probably watched too many movies. Believe it or not, that grizzly isn't going to stand on his hind legs, beat his chest like Tarzan, growl to let you know he is planning an attack and only then start moving your direction. Bear spray has been proven to be effective. It is my weapon of choice in grizzly country. The only real reason to have a handgun would be to fire three shots consecutively to help searchers find your bloody, broken body should the grizzly have decided after beating you to a pulp you really don't taste like chicken.
Don't underestimate the 9mm option. May not be ideal, but documented cases of it working. Would it be my first choice? No.
But with a hardcast +P round it is a reasonable option.
https://www.ammoland.com/2018/02/defense-against-bears-with-pistols-97-success-rate-37-incidents-by-caliber/#axzz6SNboWc8E
The bear I killed was with a single 9 mm bullet (posted my experience a few posts back). It definitely wouldn't have been my first choice if I knew I was going to be confronted with a bear that night, but it worked when I needed it...
