Imagine you're in grizzly country and you've just found a really big bull elk and put him down in a drainage bottom that's choked with willows and alder and underbrush.

And as you're working down to claim your bull,

you see a bear, a big bear, across the drainage, working down towards where your elk fell as well.

And you realize the wind is in that bear's face and he's smelled your dead bull and the blood there and he's

coming to claim that elk. Now ideally this will be an Alaska and you'll have a

grizzly tag in your pocket but it could happen too.

In Montana or Wyoming or parts of Idaho.

In those lower 48 states you're probably best off to just back off and let the bear have your bull.

Sad, but that's better than ending up losing your hunting rights for years because you shoot a protected animal or try to run it off.

You could stand up to the bear, see if he'll lose interest and leave when he realizes that a human's there. But you want to be real

cautious about that. Let's take this a step further and say you got to the bull, you're

hunting alone, you're in grizzly country so you're smart enough to keep your

rifle leaned against the carcass near you with a round-chambered as you work. And suddenly there's a bear there and he's getting real

aggressive and you don't have any time to do anything but grab your rifle and try and

defend yourself. In this case it doesn't matter if you're

in Alaska or somewhere where that bears protected. If it's you or him, the course of

action is simple, right?

But what if you're shooting a light cartridge?

You're probably going to lose that discussion with this, bear with very uncivilized intentions.

Now recently I've had a lot of requests for an episode on

hard thumping cartridges such as the 35 whaling, the 9.3 by 62, and the 338 a 6.

Addressing specifically their suitability is a backcountry hunting cartridge. And today we're going to address that. Now I'm

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