The Best Calibers for Bear Hunting [Short & Long Range]

For brand new and aspiring hunters, nonetheless, bears can appear invincible. Despite the fact that they’re usually smaller and lighter than elk, all that fur and fats makes them seem like formidable opponents.

If that’s you, otherwise you’ve merely questioned which rifle cartridges are greatest for bruins, you’ve come to the proper place. We’ll cowl every thing you’ll want to learn about choosing the proper cartridge to your hunt–from bullet option to shot placement to searching distance as to whether you want an even bigger bullet for larger bears. Choosing the right caliber gained’t flip you into Clay Newcomb in a single day, however it’s a nice place to begin.

Leap to: The Bear Cartridges We Use

Earlier than we dive into what makes a great bear searching cartridge, we should always cowl one thing much more fundamental: what makes a great bear searching bullet?

One of the vital necessary classes for any novice hunter is that bullets will act otherwise inside an animal primarily based on their development. Cup-and-core bullets gained’t react the identical as a Nosler partition which gained’t react fairly like a monolithic copper bullet. Some bullets are designed to basically explode on impression whereas others are designed to carry collectively and penetrate as deeply as doable. (For a full rundown of the most typical searching bullets, click on right here.)

Harvesting a bear doesn’t require any tremendous particular kind of bullet. Most bullets designed for searching will get the job accomplished. Nevertheless, to maximise your probability of success, choose a bullet that’s designed to carry out in your anticipated searching state of affairs.

For instance, in the event you’re searching over bait within the backwoods of Arkansas, you need a bullet that may develop and maintain collectively at excessive velocities. Keep away from cup-and-core designs that may fragment at excessive speeds and go together with a partition, monolithic, or bonded bullet, as Sig Sauer makes use of in its Platinum Hunter line. Alternatively, in the event you’re spot-and-stalk searching and also you anticipate a longer-range shot, accuracy is an even bigger consideration and you’ll want to make sure the bullet is designed to develop at any cheap searching distance. In the event you don’t know the rate vary for optimum bullet efficiency, get in contact with the producer and make sure you recognize your bullet velocity at totally different distances.

In the end, Clay Newcomb recommends prioritizing penetration over bullet growth. It’s because, in Clay’s expertise, a bear’s fur absorbs blood, which makes it tough to comply with a path. Poking an entry and exit wound within the animal will produce extra blood and make your monitoring job simpler.

Particularly within the japanese and southern U.S., black bears are shot at shut vary both over bait or with the assistance of hounds. Searching at shut vary opens up a larger number of cartridges as a result of the bullet doesn’t need to retain power and velocity at distances past 100 yards. This enables hunters to make use of basic lever-gun cartridges just like the .30-30 Win., .45-70 Govt., or .35 Remington. The quick, stubby bullets launched by these cartridges have bother at longer ranges, however they’re devastating at 50 to 100 yards.

This is the reason despite the fact that a few of these cartridges are thought of basic bear killers, none of them made our checklist. They will 100% kill black bears, however they must be utilized in these close-range situations. Our checklist options do-it-all bear rounds, however we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out these tried-and-true short-range choices.

Leap to: A Word on Shot Placement

In some methods, taking pictures a bear is not any totally different than taking pictures different huge recreation animals. Broadside pictures are greatest as a result of they provide you extra room for error, and double-lung pictures guarantee a comparatively fast kill.

Nevertheless, a bear’s body and fur current distinctive challenges that will likely be unfamiliar to deer and elk hunters. For one factor, a bear can contort its body to a a lot larger extent than a deer. Its fur also can obscure the relative location of its shoulders, again, and stomach. Add to that the standard challenges with quartering in direction of or away, or taking pictures from an elevated place, and also you’ve obtained a recipe for a protracted night time on the blood path.

To account for these errors, Clay recommends persistence. “Bears appear to all the time be transferring, particularly whenever you’re searching them over bait,” he stated. “Maybe it’s a predatory intuition in people, however seeing our prey transfer makes us really feel like we’ve got to behave shortly. The impulse to hurry the shot might be the largest mistake a bear hunter could make.”

As a substitute, anticipate that broadside shot. That is extra necessary for archery hunters than rifle hunters, however it’s nonetheless necessary. Clay likes to purpose 4 to five inches again from the shoulder on a broadside bear to get a double-lung passthrough. He additionally reminds hunters that bears have a thick layer of fats and fur on their bellies, so that you’ll have to purpose larger to hit the chest cavity.

For an entire breakdown, take a look at Clay’s full article right here.

The larger the animal, the larger the bullet, proper? Not precisely. Black bears can vary in measurement from 150 kilos to upwards of 600 kilos, which implies most of what you’ll have an opportunity to shoot lands someplace across the 275-pound mark. Any cartridge that may take down a 275-pound bruin may also have the ability to deal with one thing twice as heavy, so I wouldn’t fear about stumbling upon a black bear that’s too huge to your .308 Win., .30-06, or .270 Win.

After all, black bears aren’t the one recreation on the town. In the event you’re lucky sufficient to chase a grizzly bear, you will have a giant bore or magnum cartridge. And that’s not only for guaranteeing a fast, clear kill. Whereas all bears could be harmful, grizzlies could be particularly aggressive. You need to be packing a cartridge that offers you an ideal probability of killing the bear in a single shot to keep away from the possibly harmful state of affairs of stumbling upon a wounded grizz. The .30-06 has taken its justifiable share of grizzlies, however I’d go together with one thing bigger just like the .300 Win. Magazine., .338 Win. Magazine., or .300 PRC.