.500 Smith & Wesson revolver, image courtesy Rock Island Auction, inc.
Posted on 08/30/2024 7:47:16 AM PDT by marktwain
Here are all the cases that have been documented where calibers beyond .44 Magnum were used. There are 4 incidents where .454 Casull revolvers were fired. There was 1 incident where a .460 S&W Magnum revolver was fired. there were 2 incidents where a .500 S&W Magnum revolver was fired. These cases do not include incidents where handguns were used with other lethal means or a mix of handgun calibers were used. The incident is included if more than one handgun of the same caliber was used. Six incidents were against brown bears and one against a polar bear. All were successful. The incidents are listed by caliber and chronologically within caliber.
George Malekos was confronted with a large grizzly bear at 10 feet away on a gravel ridge, covered with snow. He had nowhere to turn. He aimed at the bear’s eye, and shot. He fired two more times as the bear whirled around, and disappeared.
Later, he and his hunting companion shot the same bear with their rifles. They found the .454 round had creased the skull above the eye, then another shot had penetrated one foot of the bear.
From More Bear Tales, p. 104-107.
And here I thought the Kenai Penisula brownie I shot off my foot with a .454 Casull about 10 years ago got the worst of it.
A rabbit hunter had a .22 rifle for rabbits and a .454 Casull revolver for bear protection. The bear
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.500 Smith & Wesson revolver, image courtesy Rock Island Auction, inc.
A friend hunts mule deer in Montana. He carries a 10mm on his chest for bear.
It seems most bear stories I read about, 10mm meets the requirements.
Absolutely everything to love about penetration in above .44 caliber.
Griz takes a few hits from a .454 Casaull in the head, shakes it off and runs off. They killed it later with long guns.
Using a .22 for hassenpfeffer and a .454 Casaull for bear defense sounds like a lopsided endeavor.
The encounters start out with the shooter trying to make a pin point shot on a huge sow bear, seconds later just happy that the fur was flying as they pulled the trigger.
I praise these guys for going BIG.
How does a .454 Casull jam? I thought that was one big point for revolvers over autos- they don’t jam like autos.
You don’t have to kill the bear to “defend” against it. A few .357 rounds to the face will drive any bear away.
Sometimes with wheel guns with strong recoil, the slug will back out of the unfired cartridges and extend beyond the end of the cylinder preventing the cylinder from turning.
This happens most often with hand loads that have not been crimped.
I am impressed by the restraint of several of the Outdoorsmen - Hunters first person accounts. Many sincerely try to discourage the bears before resorting to lethal firearms use.
“With this, you almost hope you’re attacked by a bear.”
I get it. I have one .38 special (Taurus). Love that little guy.
The S&W .460 mag always has interested me because it can safely shoot .45 Colt and .454 Casull, as well as .460 S&W (and not that you’d want to but also the .45 Schofield). And in a sufficiently strong revolver (i.e., S&W .460, Ruger Blackhawk, Magnum Research BFR), you can load the .45 Colt hotter than the .44 Remington Magnum.
So you could shoot lite .45 Colt loads for plinking but carry full-house .460 magnums when you’re in bear country.
With a hot .460 load you don’t even have to hit the bear because the bark from that thing (65,000 psi Pmax!!!!) will set the woods on fire, which probably will do more to discourage the bear than the gunshot.
I have shot bears with rifles’, shotguns and a couple different handgun calibers.
I shoot and reload the 44mag, 45colt, 454 and 460.
Very top end 45colt loads are pushing hard on top 44mag loads
It all depends on what handguns one does the comparison with.
A short barreled 44 can be beat by a long barreled 45colt.
A 44mag with X powder and a 45colt with Y powder might give totally different velocities in different handguns.
The statement that a hot 45colt well be faster with the same bullet weight then a 44mag. I found generally doesn’t hold up. They can be really close. It all depends on the handgun load and bullet weight.
Now top loads in my 454 and in my 460s tend to be to much of a good thing.
I cap my recoil level in all of them to around a 300gr bullet at 1500fps I can get that out of my 44mag 14 inch contender. The same load in 4 to 7.5 inch guns give me 1150 to 1300fps.
I get 1500fps out of top loads for my 454 and easily with my 10 inch 460.
In 44mag to 500S@W I have well over twenty five thousand rounds fired.
The 44mag is a very decent compromise between size and power.
I am always torn between raw power and controllability. top and magnum loads are a lot harder to get follow up shots with
If a 44 magnum 240 grain medium load got 1150 fps out of a six-inch non-ported model 29, what would the likely velocity be out of a custom 3-inch non-ported model 29?
I figure 50fps less per inch of barrel.
But it varies hugely I have 5.5 inch 44 that give faster vel. then any of my 3 7.5s inch 44s.
The only way to really know is conograph them.
Thanks for the info.
There’s a new incident in Alaska on YouTube. I think it was just a few weeks ago where father and son hunters got jumped by a grizzly in Alaska. The son shot it at close range with a 10 mm and it died in top of him. The father also shot it with a .40 cal.
The son is filming the video and shows the dead bear about 15 behind him and a wound on his leg that he can’t decide if he shot himself or the grizzly bit him.
25K !!! That's a buttload of shooting !!! How long have You been shooting that Gun ? Since You were a Toddler ?
Well my first 44 was brought 20 plus years ago. So that is less then 1250 rounds a years.
Easy to do if your serious about your pistol craft.
Some years I easily shot 10000 plus rounds a year with handguns from 22rf to the big bores,
I have been seriously shooting handguns for 50 plus years.
I do 25,000 rounds of shooting on any typical range afternoon.
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