What Locals Actually Carry For Bears, Hogs and Mountain Lions

Alaska vs Montana vs Texas: What Locals Actually Carry for Bears, Hogs and Mountain Lions video from Ivan's Journal.

Summary:

The biggest bear gun I ever owned spent most of a season in a truck console. Big stainless revolver, long barrel, kicked like a mule. And for weeks at a time it sat three hundred yards from where I was standing, because it was heavy, it was awkward, and it didn't fit the way I moved through the brush.

That's the part nobody puts in the forum arguments. People online will fight for hours over grains and foot-pounds. The folks who live with bears, hogs and big cats every day choose by weight, by holster, by what their hands are doing when trouble shows up, and by what the paperwork looks like afterward.

I used to be a pure big-bore man. More gun, more safety. Then I kept seeing guides, fishermen and ranchers carry things that didn't match what I'd been told was the minimum. So I went looking for evidence instead of opinions, and the evidence didn't line up neatly with either side.

In 2012 Tom Smith's team published a study of 269 firearm and bear incidents in Alaska going back to 1883. Handguns stopped the bear 84 percent of the time. Rifles and shotguns, 76 percent. No significant difference. And the best predictor of a good outcome wasn't the gun at all. It was the situation.

What we go through:

Why a rifle on your shoulder isn't in your hands on a salmon stream

What the Smith study got right, and where the critics have a fair point

The pump 12 gauge with slugs and the 45-70 guide gun in camp

How the Glock 20 in 10mm went from a punchline to a belt you see all over Alaska

Dean Weingarten's 170 handgun cases and why the 44 Magnum still has a record

Alaska's DLP rule: report in 15 days, skin the bear, surrender the hide, claws and skull

Montana grizzlies, federal protection, and the Brian Charette case

The bear spray number both camps misquote, 92 percent against three out of nine

Texas feral hogs, 2.6 million of them, and why it's pest control and not hunting

AR rifles, thermal optics and traps as one control system

The first mountain lion rules in Texas history in 2024, and how rare lion attacks really are

Why the threat decides the gun, not the state's reputation

What I'd carry into big bear country now

Said plainly on safety: practice your draw with an unloaded gun and follow the manual. Use factory ammunition the maker rates for your pistol. Wear eye and ear protection at the range and train with the exact load you carry. Carry laws change and every place has restricted areas, so check the current rules where you're going. Don't take a YouTube video, this one included, as legal advice. 

A gun isn't a force field. The one who walks out of the woods is usually the one who had something in his hand quickly. I wouldn't pick the gun that won the most arguments. I'd pick the one I'd still be wearing on the tenth day of the trip, tired and not expecting anything.

I've been writing lessons like this down for years, the stuff you never hear across a gun counter. They're in my book at ivansjournal.com