Bears Are Not Bulletproof, Don’t Aim at the Wrong Spot

One of the persistent myths about shooting bears in self-defense is a bear’s skull is nearly bulletproof. Bears skulls are not bulletproof. However, bear heads are big. It is easy to miss the brain or spine if you aim at the wrong spot or aim away from the brain because you are afraid the bullet will “bounce off.” This is exacerbated by trophy hunters’ hesitancy to shoot a bear in the head. A powerful shot to the brain cavity will fracture the skull, making measurement for the record books impossible.

It is difficult to hit the brain of a bear if you deliberately aim to miss the bear’s brain. It is difficult to hit the brain if you are aiming at a place where the brain is not. Here are some examples where the myth and poor understanding of bear anatomy prevailed.

The year appears to be about 1915 or later, as related by the writer Calvin H. Barkdull on page 153 of Blood on the Arctic Snow, published in 1956.

The narrator shot the bear several times with .45-90 black powder loads from an 1886 Winchester rifle. He finished the bear with a headshot to the base of the ear.

A .45-90 black powder cartridge is fully capable of smashing completely through a big bear’s skull and brain with a frontal shot. The normal black powder load is a 400-grain bullet traveling at 1300 fps. You have to know the right place to aim.

“I wouldn’t go any way near a Bear unless I had a 12gage that carried slugs
big ones.”

We get black bears on our property seasonally...I scare them away with a bright flashlight and a Umerex Steel Storm (I’m on my deck the bear is one story below).

I did get rather close to two Alaskan brown bears once — they took a swipe at my dangling leg and missed me by a foot or two...11:30 PM still fairly bright outside as the sun had yet to set...

One of my nine lives gone that evening to be sure! (Working in a cannery - NO ability to carry...)

“The bear, Gilbert later realized, was simply being a bear—reacting to his presence as a threat to her cubs. She wasn’t interested in killing him for the malicious reasons humans attribute in their deep trait of anthropomorphizing other animals. She simply wanted to neutralize an unknown and unidentified threat and once it was no longer a threat, she left....

Sure. And Smallpox virus are simply being a virus when it attacks and kills human hosts. Anopheles mosquitoes are only being mosquitoes when they infect humans with malaria. If mosquitoes triggered the maternal instinct which fuzzy mammals, such as bears, trigger, there would be a greater cry to keep them from being swatted.

There are several cases where people are killed in these kind of attacks, where the bear leaves then comes back and feeds on the remains. Most of the time it does not happen, because people today are good at rescues.

It is more likely the bear stops because, instinctively, prey which ceases to struggle is dead or dying, and they will be able to come back and feed on them later, after the prey have "softened" a bit.

The bear attacks, and doesn't stop until the thing attacked appears to be dead or dying.

"simply being a bear—reacting to his presence as a threat to her cubs." This is a serious bit of anthropomorphizing, attempting to give the bear human motherly feelings.

Most bear species do not react this way. Brown/Grizzly bears (the same species) are unique. It is probably because they evolved with humans in Europe and Asia, and those which attacked single or paired humans passed their genes on more successfully than those which did not.

Bears seldom attack three or more humans. It is obvious why. Three or more humans, armed even with relatively primitive weapons, tend to kill bears. Those genes do not get passed on.

This worked until humans developed technology which allowed single humans to effectively kill bears much of the time.

Then even the brown/grizzly bears began to alter their behavior, as those which did not were selected out of the gene pool.

The other bear species across the world do not react this way.

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