"Bear Loads - How to Hunt
Black Bear"
Handgunning, July/August 1995
If you’ve got the
nerve to hunt this dangerous game, here’s how world-class shooter
Doug Koenig and Outdoor Editor Dick Metcalf did it, courtesy of
master guide Wayne Bosowicz’s Foggy Mountain Guide Service.
By Dick Metcalf
BEAR LOAD (continued from
previous page)
Now what about ammunition? For a bear
cartridge anything equal to or more powerful than a .41 Magnum or
.44 Magnum will be fine. Oldtime black bear hunters say that any
load that throws at least a 200-grain or bigger solid bullet at 1000
fps or more will take any bear in the woods. By that standard a good
heavy-power .44 Special or .45 Colt handload in the right gun should
work fine and has. As for my favorite whitetail .357 Magnum or other
similar-caliber load, a well-placed shot with a good bullet will
certainly kill a bear, but it's not recommended. Wayne Bosowicz
carried a Colt Python .357 Magnum revolver for years as his bear
gun. Then he encountered a situation when a charged-up major boar
came down from a tree and soaked up an entire cylinder full of
158-grain JHP ammo in the chest without slowing down. Bosowicz
immediately went and bought a Ruger Blackhawk .41 Magnum revolver
and has carried a .41 Magnum ever since. He says he has never had it
fail to stop a bear on site.
 The bullet is the key. A black bear
has dense, tough muscles and is covered with thick fur, hide, and
fat. You need a bullet that will penetrate all that, and most
hollowpoints used in most .41, .44, and .45 cartridges and handloads
aren't very good choices. Bosowicz uses commercial Remington
210-grain JSP ammunition in his .41 Magnum and recommends any
similarly structured loads. In a .44 Magnum a 240-grain JSP or a
220-grain or heavier silhouette-style bullet like Federal loads
commercially and other bullet makers offer for handloading are also
fine choices.
A JSP bullet at a velocity that will
completely penetrate the chest of an average-size bear is probably a
better choice than a hardcast SWC solid. The JSP will deform while
traversing dense tissue, will therefore create a larger disruption
channel, and if it goes all the way through it will leave a larger
exit wound than a hard, non-deforming cast bullet. One point worth
mentioning is that a lot of Foggy Mountain handgun hunters do use
210-grain JHP .41 Magnum and 240-grain JHP .44 Magnum ammunition in
revolvers and have killed bear very efficiently. Of course, at the
velocities they are getting from six- and eight-inch revolver
barrels, these hollowpoints are not expanding, and their effect is
actually the same as if they were JSPs. And if you do select a cast
bullet for your bear load, use a softer alloy that will deform in
muscle tissue.
You'll have to make your own specific
choice. After all, that's part of the fun of dreaming about and
getting ready for a hunt. And if you use a minimum .40 caliber, a
minimum 200-grain solid deformable bullet, and a minimum 1000-fps
velocity from your chosen gun, you'll have a load that will anchor
any black bear that stands in your sights.
On last September's hunt Doug Koenig
used a Colt stainless Anaconda .44 Magnum with a four-inch barrel
and the red dot sight described earlier. He would have liked a
longer barrel, but this was the only Anaconda he could get on short
notice and any other make of .44 Magnum was out of the question
because Doug shoots competitively for Team Colt. His cartridge was a
handloaded .44 Magnum employing a Sierra 220-grain MCP bullet over
25.0 grains of Accurate Arms No.9 powder for about 1250 fps from the
four-inch gun. It was a good choice of bullet; the Sierra 220
grainer was originally designed for metallic silhouette competition
(it is commercially loaded by Federal) and has a thick jacket that
curls up over the ogive and leaves only a small circle of core lead
exposed on the tip of the nose. Strong on penetration, it will
nonetheless deform if it encounters tough tissue or bone.
My own choice of arms for this Maine
hunt was a new Taurus double-action .44 Magnum with the
factory-issue ported eight-inch barrel. I had just finished
reviewing the gun for our sister publication Shooting Times and
thought I'd give it a real field workout. My own choice of
ammunition was Remington's tried-and-true factory 240-grain JSP
load. On paper, it'll put five in one hole from the Taurus at 25
feet - what more do you need?
The hunt itself had a high
frustration quotient. The trip took us 50 miles deep into the dense
wilderness forests of northern Maine and left us to sit out in our
blinds and confront our quarry alone, at close quarters, with no
backup but our own shooting abilities and presence of mind. Doug got
a bear. I didn't. That's why they call it "hunting."
Our blinds were far up in Maine's
central highlands near Mount Katahdin, and we had a wind problem
from day one - swirling winds disrupt the woods' normal scent
patterns and make bear very nervous and even more reclusive. Plus an
early major storm blew in from the ocean and completely drowned us
out for one full day. It was a tough week.
While Koenig's incredible competition
career has been widely reported, it is less widely known that he is
an intensely committed hunter as well. When the match season is over
each fall he goes back to his Pennsylvania home and takes to the
woods – literally - for the next four months, and he has
successfully hunted whitetails, elk, and other game with gun and bow
all over the country. This was his first handgun hunt for bear, and
he had hoped to score quickly so he could get back home and practice
for the USPSA National Championships. So when each unsuccessful day
rolled by, his evening remark would be, "Well, I guess I'll stay
just one more day."
His
patience was rewarded. In the last few minutes of visible light on
the last day of the hunt schedule, the first-seen bear of the week
approached his bait. Doug's treestand was in less dense cover than
usual, and his eye caught its movement through a gap in the brush
about 40 yards out. The bear was extremely wary, moving laterally
beyond the bait as Doug tried to track brief glimpses through the
cover with his dot sight. Then the bear spun and ran directly away
at full speed crashing through the brush. At about 60 yards it was
momentarily visible between two trees, going rapidly away at a
slight angle. Koenig placed the dot behind its front shoulder and
fired. The bear disappeared.
Doug got down and went to the point
of fire and found an immediate blood trail, which he followed into
the twilight (for a few understandably tense moments). The bear, a
225-pound sow, was lying dead 50 yards along. The bullet had entered
at a shallow angle at point of aim behind the shoulder, skimmed
along the outside of the rib cage, and exited through the center
base of the neck, severing all major blood vessels. It was a heck of
a shot on a running animal in dim light at 60 yards through a
thread-needle gap. The kid is no slouch.
MAYBE NEXT TIME
How did I do? Not quite so well. I
sat motionless in my ground blind through wind and rain for a week,
with the sound of Doug's shot from a mile away the only high point.
I even stayed over for a few more days into the next hunt cycle, but
still no bear at my bait buffet. Oh, well. Maybe I scratched at the
wrong moment. I've taken trophy bear with Wayne Bosowicz at Foggy
Mountain before, but not this time. That's why they call it
"hunting," and I'll be back to try again.
Back to previous
section "Choosing a Bear Gun"
How to Hunt
Black Bear can be read in
the July/August 1995 issue of Handgunning. See page 60.
Read more about
Black Bear Hunting with Foggy Mountain Guide Service. | 
