It occurs to me that while I've been in 90+ MPH winds in the high country, down below the treeline where a bear encounter is much more likely, and at a closer range, the wind is muted by the foliage.
The research directly found that with a headwind of any significant amount more than 1 m/s, limited the range of bear spray to 5-7 feet.
Such is information which I thought could make a significant change in your understanding of how effective bear spray is.
The reduction in range is extremely important.
I understand you have had training. Unfortunately, I believe your training has misinformed you.
Bear spray is *not* more effective than handguns in stopping bear attacks. At best, it is almost as effective in stopping attacks which are not serious, but of course, both methods have some drawbacks.
If you are comfortable with bear spray, it is your choice.
Here is a little factoid which may give pause. This is backed up by easily verified searches on the Internet.
9 people have been killed by bears in incidents where bear spray was used to defend (maybe 10 if you include a captive bear which killed a trainer in California). Bear spray has only been in use from about 1985. One of those incidents was in Russia, in the middle of winter where a bear researcher was killed.
1 person has been killed by a bear in incidents where handguns were used to defend against a bear attack. That was a .22 handgun against a polar bear in the Svalbard archipelago in the arctic. This is from extensive searches for handgun failures over several years, yielding over 200 documented cases where handguns were used since 1890. There were four documented failures (the gunfire did not stop the bears. One was the Svalbard incident) in about 170 cases where only handguns were involved (there are about 30 cases which involved multiple lethal methods used)
I mention the fatalities because they are the best documented incidents and the least subject to selection bias.
Bear attacks are pretty rare events. Lots of people go hiking in bear country and never have a problem. I have researched this extensively, over years. The research by bear spray proponents (Tom Smith is the most prominent of those researchers) does not show what you have been told about the effectiveness of bear spray. It is not ineffective, it is simply not nearly as effective as early claims made it out to be.
The primary purpose of the research seems to have been to save bears. It is better than nothing as a defense against bears, but it does fail at times where handguns seem to work well.
There are several cases where people were not able to deploy bear spray. The difficulties of deploying bear spray are pretty similar to the difficulties in deploying handguns, but handguns have about 150 years of ergonomic development, which bear spray does not. It is mostly a training problem for either system, or the incident occurs so fast that either system would not have worked before the bear was on them.
Sorry to run on and on, but I hope to allow you to understand this subject has suffered from a huge media blitz, pushing a narrative which is not true.