Lessons From Handgun Defense Failures Against Bears

AmmoLand ^ | April 4, 2022 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

In 2016, this correspondent and others started searching for incidents in which a handgun was fired to defend against a bear or bears, and failed to stop the attack by driving off or killing the bear.

Access to a defensive tool, such as a shotgun, rifle, bear spray,  handgun, hatchet, or knife all presents similar problems. Therefore we only considered cases where a handgun was actually fired. If we were looking at the effectiveness of bear spray, we would only look at cases where the bear spray was actually sprayed.

To prevent selection bias, all cases where a handgun was fired defensively against a bear or bears, which could be documented, were included.

People on the Internet claimed handguns were ineffective in defending against bears. Over years, we found 120 cases where handguns were effectively used in defense against bears.

We found three (3) failures of handguns against attacking bears.

The three failures included failures against the three bear species found in North America, one each of polar, grizzly, and black bears.

Here are the details of the three cases, presented in chronological order, followed by analysis and commentary:

August, 1995, Norway, Svalbard Archepelago, .22 rimfire, Failure, Polar Bear, From Spitsbergen: Svalbard, Franz Josef, Jan Mayen, 3rd Brant travel Guide, by Andres Umbreit

Kiepertoyo Hinlopen Strait, August, 1995

Another five people of the crew set out separately with only a .22 pistol and a flare gun. After an hour’s march, the second party were met by a bear, 75m away and openly aggressive. The bear was distracted neither by warning shot nor flare and attacked one of the party. As he did so, he was shot, from a range of only 15m and turned against the man who had fired at him. This man tossed the gun to the first, who shot again.

[gundog]

I think all the bears carry a bandolier for the bear with the M-60.