ratso000
Member
I went to Vancouver last year and took a 7 ft Black bear with a 375 hh mag at 185 yards with 300 Nosler Partition..the guide carried a 375 as well..the bear ran 20 yards .
Favorite Black Bear Bullet?
- Thread starter megastink
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7 RM with 160 Partitions. Loaded up with 7977, I get 3,000 fps from a stock Tikka T3. Have shot the 160 Accubonds and Partitions plenty, and the Partitions always give a more violent expansion and bigger holes, and you don't give up much inside 600 ballistics-wise.
freddiej
Well-Known Member
Piggybacking RT2506's post. 7MM R/M is not my favorite cartridge, I think it's an descent enough cartridge. deer it is good, Elk with the right shooter behind it, it's good.. Bear? I would not trust it. I own a 375 H&H. I trust that with 300 grain Nosler AB's to stop bears. I have gotten to the DG solid & DGX from Hornady as a good round for bear too. then Cutting Edge and Hammer are also good slugs for my 375 H&H. While I was up in Montana someone handed me a handful of these funny looking brass looking slugs.. they turned out to be Nosler Solid Bulls. Wonderful bear slugs. this gun was bought in Alaska for bears. it spent more than 50 years doing just that. when I got it I was going to be moving up to Alaska but that fell through. I still used this gun for bear defense in Montana. It does an excellent job once you do yours. a good neck shot or shoulder shot. heart and lung shots without using a 50 BMG just do not work. you need to turn off the electrical connection between the head and the body. spine disrupting shots are best. trying to crush the skull is a waste of time.
Hornady 175 Grain Interlocks out of the 7 Mag work great on bear. Heavy enough for complete penetration on shoulder shots but heavy expansion so you get a good wide wound channel and an exit wound. Bears rarely ran at all shot through the shoulders with them. Partition would be my next choice. Study bear anatomy, what a lot of guys think is a shoulder shot is actually too far back and often too low.. If you look at the pictures below, the suggested aim point is a lung shot. It will kill the bear, but not before it runs quite a long ways.
Christensen 7mag
Well-Known Member
I shot a 7' black bear here in California this year with a 145 Barnes LRX @ 3100 fps. The shot was only 200 yds he went 10' and was done complete pass through and broke the offside shoulder.
Shootin4fun
Well-Known Member
Blackbear are not that tough but they come in all sizes. A guy in the next neighborhood shot a "teenager" with a 9mm pistol in his house and it ran outside and dropped dead. There are videso of them going down fast at medium long distances with a 7mmRM on youtube. It's plenty powerful enough. I can't imagine how may have been killed with a 270 or '06. At 600 yards you'd better be pretty precise though, and disable them from running by destroying the front shoulder or else a spine/cns shot or they will run, like any wounded animal.
Shootin4fun
Well-Known Member
I can imagine that the 145 at 3100 was devastating. Plenty of velocity and resistance for it to expand. Barnes have drilled through leaving a quarter sized exit on the game I've shot with them.
LongBomber
Well-Known Member
Where I live a pretty average blackbear would weigh around 250 pounds. So not a big animal, reall similar in weight to a fully mature mulie buck. But bone structure and muscle thickness is def much thicker. I usually use a 33 of some kind for speing bear hunts. I see some of the pictures of big black's from the easy coast in the 500+ pounds range but we just don't see them here that size, one of those chuuby buggers would be wild to see here.
Coastal black bear on van island should get into the 350 pounds range with the better food supply.
megastink
Well-Known Member
Every few years out here, someone shoots an 800lb class black bear. That's a very uncommon size, but I've seen some real bruisers over the years. I just want to be ready for the bear of a lifetime.
snox801
Well-Known Member
I think you are on the right track. I'm a huge hammer fan as they have been so consistent in the way they perform I don't use anything else and I kill a lot of deer, pigs and rams every year.
But like other mentioned it's very tough to beat a nosler partition. I think the hammers are just a bit more sleek for farther shots.
But like other mentioned it's very tough to beat a nosler partition. I think the hammers are just a bit more sleek for farther shots.
MagnumManiac
Well-Known Member
From what I've seen with bears, my experience is with Brown bears, the shot placement is what makes or breaks the situation.
For a bear not to run, the shot must be in the shoulder and connecting BOTH, or high enough to take out the spine as well.
My first time out was with a 338 and 250gr Partitions. They worked, but did not anchor the animal, it spun and came straight at us, a second shot under the chin at 20 dropped it. I then used the 275gr Speer Semi Spitzer in my 338. Phil Shoemaker and his daughter weren't fond of 338's, but I convinced them otherwise.
In the following years guiding, I moved to a 375 Weatherby using 300gr Woodleigh Weldcore PP's or 300gr Partitions.
Have seen Kodak's taken with 7mm's and have seen both failures and success. Some 7mm bullets are just too hard IMHO.
Since having the 7STW, which is my first 7mm cartridge, I am beginning to see this trend of hard Bullets, so I am using ABLR and BT's on our small deer here. Have not tried to take a Sambar yet, which are only just smaller than Elk in weight (300kg on the hoof).
Cheers.
For a bear not to run, the shot must be in the shoulder and connecting BOTH, or high enough to take out the spine as well.
My first time out was with a 338 and 250gr Partitions. They worked, but did not anchor the animal, it spun and came straight at us, a second shot under the chin at 20 dropped it. I then used the 275gr Speer Semi Spitzer in my 338. Phil Shoemaker and his daughter weren't fond of 338's, but I convinced them otherwise.
In the following years guiding, I moved to a 375 Weatherby using 300gr Woodleigh Weldcore PP's or 300gr Partitions.
Have seen Kodak's taken with 7mm's and have seen both failures and success. Some 7mm bullets are just too hard IMHO.
Since having the 7STW, which is my first 7mm cartridge, I am beginning to see this trend of hard Bullets, so I am using ABLR and BT's on our small deer here. Have not tried to take a Sambar yet, which are only just smaller than Elk in weight (300kg on the hoof).
Cheers.
bpcrshooter
Well-Known Member
160gr AB or a 176 Hornady interlock. If you want bang flop........you gunna need more gun. 45-70 an 405-500gr RNFP should do the trick as well
I use 220ELD-X in a 300RUM and you don't have no tracking to do they drop like sack of potatoes
You didn't ask this and the 45 70 isn't viable over 250 yards unless u do a lot of practice to learn the trajectory but of all the cartridge it is my favourite bear medicine. I shot bear control for a few decades and nothing works better for bang flop than a 45 70 with a 350 grain Hornady RN. The 7 Mag works fine and I have shot them with pretty much every common cartridge including the 460 Bee but on balance the 444 or 45 70 are about the best combo you will ever find.
