02-29-2020, 04:41 PM
Double Naught Spy Wrote:Bear skulls are not so much hard to penetrate as they are hard to hit. The skull itself, in particular the brain case, is a fairly small subset of the overall notion of what is seen as the head, completely with all the fur. I have no doubt that people shoot a lot of fur trying to hit the heads of bears, not realizing that the skull isn't as large as the extent of the fur.
This link shows a pic of a black bear head, relative position of the brain, and the dotted outline is the perimeter of the bony skull and mandible for a bear facing you, as during a charge. Note how much larger the head is than the actual skull and how small the brain is relative to the skull and to the head.
https://thefiringline.com/forums/attachm...1230728059
This notion of wanting a good penetrating round such as a hard cast non-expanding round or fmj to stop bears has always bothered me. We pick ammo for hunting that is supposed to penetrate well enough to reach the vitals and cause a lot of disruption to those vitals and to bring about a quick kill. Non-expanding ammo and most FMJ don't have the reputation of doing a lot of tissue damage to bring about a quick kill, yet that is what people want to stop a charging bear. I am of the mindset that a round penciling through with more penetration isn't as apt to stop a bear quickly.
I understand that people want something that will go through bone. I guess that if you only get one shot, and that shot hits the humerus, that you want the bullet to still penetrate a good ways and hopefully eventually stop the bear. The opposite side to that is that if it doesn't hit a big bone like the humerus, it will not do nearly the damage of a good expanding bullet and isn't as likely to stop a bear quicker.
Yes, but I shot a relatively small deer with a 338 Win mag using a 250 grain Sierra Game King bullet that exploded on impact. It was a horrific wound, but didn't penetrate far enough for a quick kill. It ran over a mile before I tracked it and put it out of it's misery. If that had been a charging grizzly, I would have been in a world of hurt. A bullet needs to penetrate and be able to hit vitals. When using a handgun, most people in Montana or Alaska will use a hard cast, FMJ or solid copper bullet.. Grizzly are big animals and it requires a strong bullet to penetrate. Like I stated before, this topic can get get quite heated.