A recent video at Ron Spomer Outdoors on YouTube shares a wild tale of fighting off an Alaskan brown bear attack with a 9mm pistol. Does the adage “Nine for the hood, ten for the woods” hold up? Or is 9mm a good round to consider for both environments? Let’s watch the video and find out . . .
Let’s start with the obvious: the man lived to tell the tale. Otherwise, we’d be looking at a news report of a missing man or one who died, not an interview with him. I don’t see a Ouija board, so clearly he lived to tell the tale. But sometimes survival is a skill, sometimes it’s having the right tool, and sometimes it’s just dumb luck.
If you’re not the “watch a video” type, you’re too busy, or you can’t right now, here’s a quick summary.
Phil Shoemaker was out in the woods with clients of his outdoor guide business, a man and his wife. The goal? Head out on a plane into the Alaskan backcountry, do some fishing, and take a break from raising teenage girls. Who doesn’t like fishing? It wasn’t long before they found that includes a bear they came across. After trying to frighten the bear away by yelling, Shoemaker drew his 9mm pistol and the bear ran away.
For those of you who are wondering why on earth a guide in Alaska would consider going into the back country with a 9mm, there’s a good answer: he wasn’t carrying normal 9mm rounds. After 30 years of carrying a .44 Magnum revolver, Shoemaker worked with Buffalo Bore to test some new rounds for exactly this purpose. With wet magazine testing (literally wet paper), he found the 9mm to be comparable to .357 Magnum. That had worked well on bear carcass testing and a 9mm would be a lot easier to carry, give him more capacity, and the ability to do a magazine swap.
Shoemaker got a chance to test this new ammunition when the bear did an about face and came back, this time charging at full speed. Knowing that he wouldn’t have much time and with his clients only 20 feet behind him, he mentally prepared to get his shots off quickly…only to see the bear emerge from the woods making a bee-line for the clients, who hugged each other for safety and take themselves down into the grass.
The bear went over the top of them and stopped in confusion, unsure what to do next. Shoemaker was 12-15 feet away. With the clients down, he was able to safely get a shot off on the bear, placing it right behind the shoulder. The bear roared and tried to bite at where the wound as the guide placed some additional shots. After four hits, the bear ran. After ten yards and another shot to the butt, the bear fell into a pile for good.
Later, after taking the clients back to town and skinning the bear, Shoemaker found that one of the Buffalo Bore rounds had penetrated all the way through the carcass. Hemorrhaging was profuse, so it was pretty clear that the 147gr PENETRATOR +P+ flat-nose bullet traveling at 1300 fps had done the job as intended.
Takeaways
Clearly, you wouldn’t want to even try this with normal FMJ or hollowpoint rounds, but this shows that with some work, a 9mm handgun that can handle t+P+ chamber pressures and those PENETRATOR bullets are a viable option when you head into the woods. So if you gear up right, you can have “a mag for the streets and a mag for the woods.” It’s also important to note that this kind of round only works well in a full-sized gun. Don’t try this with pistol that has a 2.5- or 3-inch barrel. The extra barrel length is needed to burn the propellant and achieve those kinds of velocities.
Personally, though, I’d rather have the additional peace of mind that comes from loading an even better penetrator bullet in a 10mm case (Buffalo Bore also sells this). The extra weight, extra power, and the extra penetration would probably be better not only for this kind of situation, but also for a straight-on charge where you can’t place an ideal shot behind the shoulder. Needing to penetrate the face, skull, and front of the ribcage might be a little much even for these newer, innovative and powerful 9mm rounds. Be careful out there.
A black bear was spotted about 1/2 mile from my home right here in the ‘fasionable’ West End of Allentown. That was 2 days ago. Guessing he show up to raid bird feeders. Would bears feed on ferrel cats?
Anyway, in bear country, I would carry a 10mm with defensive rounds. But the only time I go into bear country is when I go to the Rod and Gun club. And bears do not like all of that noise.
A 147 grain .35 caliber bullet with a muzzle velocity of 1300 feet-per-second is on par with a moderate .357 Magnum load shooting out of a revolver with a 4-inch barrel. That doesn’t exactly strike me as a reliable large bear stopper.
When it comes to a large bear stopper, the absolute minimum would be a hot loaded .357 Magnum cartridge with 180 grain hardcast bullet and large/flat meplat. (And at least a 4-inch barrel, with a 6-inch barrel being even better for a modest velocity boost.) Another possible absolute minimum would be a hot loaded 10mm Auto cartridge with 200 grain hardcast bullet and a large/flat meplat. (Also with at least a 4.5-inch barrel and 5-inch barrel being even better for a tiny velocity boost.) And I think both of those are not adequate to stop a large bear reliably.
I am a serious adherent to the philosophy, “There is no replacement for displacement.” My woods gun (for smaller black bears and white-tailed deer) is a large .44 Magnum revolver with 6-inch barrel and moderate loads with 240 grain softpoints. If I am worried about large bears, then I step up to hot loads with 300 grain hardcast bullets and large/flat meplats. Those have a muzzle velocity around 1,350 feet-per-second out of a 6-inch barrel. Note that those 300 grain .43 caliber bullets are 1.5 times the frontal surface area and twice the weight of those 9mm +P+ 147 grain penetrator cartridges.