Nothing creates more arguments, more unnecessary trepidation, and more just pure fun when it comes to discussing appropriate firearms, cartridges, and bullets for bears.

I'm Joseph von Benedict, and this is the backcountry hunting podcast.

Welcome to the show today, folks.

There's a big thunderstorm rolling and outside. I've got a pot

full of herbal tea. My wife is British and so I drink tea.

I'm going to address three different approaches, each for two different species,

black bears and of course the big bears.

The three approaches are hunting bears, backup guide

guns for bears, and firearms for self-defense against bears. I'll also address

bullet choice. This is really critical. All right let's kick it off with

black bears and something that I call the deer cartridge myth and that is that over and over it's been said that any good deer

cartridge is adequate for black bears. Now this is probably true in 90% of the

cases however let's remember the bears are not like deer. They don't hit a maximum

size the same way early on in life. Bears continue to grow, yes growth slows, but a bear lives longer than a deer and a

15 year old bear is significantly bigger than a 9 or 10 year old bear.

Okay, so a deer that may hit max bulk at four or five years of

age, whether it's a mule deer or a white tail you're rarely going to see anything much bigger than about a 250 pound animal

And no matter what angle you shoot at it, there's a finite mass there that your bullet has to compromise in order to effectively

and ethically and quickly kill that animal. A black bear can be much much bigger. Now I think most of us

know that you know your average 400 pound black bear probably really tipped the scales at about 200 pounds.

I've rarely seen an animal that ends up with such inflated numbers when people estimate their size.

However, a 200 pound black bear is a pretty big bear.

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