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Daddystouch -> RE: How to survive a grizzly bear attack (6/12/2009 1:00:48 PM)
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When I was in griz country I carried a semi-auto 12 bore with slugs (that's 12 gauge to you Americans ;-)). Deep penetration, big bullet and high repeatability. Wouldn't want anything less myself and is versatile enough for deer, moose, birds, two legged predators, whatever - and is going to be cheaper than revolvers or rifles in big calibers.
If you want to stick with a side-arm, then it gets interesting. There's two problems with grizzlies. One is that, if you're being charged, the target presented to you is a small head and big shoulders. You can't count on hitting the head as that's a tough shot, and the shoulders protect the internal organs. On the one hand, you need a big, high velocity bullet to penetrate through those shoulders and take him out, but on the other hand you want to be able to make follow up shots to chip away at him. For pure power, .500 S&W would be preferable. Otherwise, .454 Casull, .460 S&W, .480 Ruger or .475 Linebaugh would be appropriate. .44 magnum may work, but then again it might not.
The other school of thought, however, is to focus on repeatability. With all of those cartridges you're probably only going to get one shot before he reaches you, but with, say, a Glock 20 you've got 16 rounds of 10mm Auto on tap. I know for a fact you can kill a charging black bear with 10mm, and while grizzlies are certainly tougher I can well imagine it being effective. The G20 is also considerably lighter than revolvers in the other more powerful, less repeatable cartridges. Perhaps most importantly, it's easier to shoot. You're going to have to practice a lot to be any good with .500 Smith out of a 4 inch barrel, but the 10mm can be tamed by an average shooter fairly easily.
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