Posted 25 June 2006 16:28
One for all of you who think handguns do not work. Sounds like a very close and fast attack that was taken care of a by a fast draw and good shooting.

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Article Published: Friday, June 23, 2006



Man shoots big griz while answering nature's call

By TIM MOWRY, Staff Writer

It's one of those only-in-Alaska-type stories that is almost too unbelievable to be true.
But Chris Yeager swears it's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and he has the hide of a trophy Interior grizzly bear to prove it.

It was May 30 and Yeager was driving up the Elliott Highway en route to a black bear bait station he had set up in the woods about 140 miles north of Fairbanks.

After stopping at the Hilltop Cafe for "one of those big breakfast omelettes that are about 18 inches wide and 4 inches deep," as he put it, Yeager pulled over on the side of the Elliott Highway at Mile 97 to answer nature's call. He grabbed a roll of toilet paper and slung on a shoulder holster containing his .460-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun.



While Yeager was planning to use the pistol to shoot a black bear if he saw one from his tree stand, he basically takes a gun with him everywhere he goes, which is not unnatural behavior considering he is a bona fide gun nut who works as a range technician at the Fort Wainwright firing range and moonlights as the manager of Alaskan Gun & Ammo on Sixth Avenue.

Besides, he was walking into the woods in Alaska and Yeager is the type of person who believes anyone going into the woods in Alaska should be carrying a gun.

He is also the type of person who believes that when you stop on the road to answer nature's call, you should do so a considerable distance off the road, so as not to offend any passing motorists.

Or as the affable Yeager put it, "I like to walk far enough off the road so people see a whitetail when they go by, if you know what I mean?"

Yeager was about 250 yards off the road, searching for a suitable spot, when he heard what he said sounded like a horse running.

"I thought, 'That's strange; who would be running a horse out here?' " said Yeager, a disabled veteran who served two years during the Persian Gulf War.

It sounded like it was coming from behind him so Yeager turned around. When he did so, he was shocked to see a big grizzly bearing down on him, literally and figuratively.

"He was really close," Yeager said. "I was smelling his breath."

There was nothing Yeager could do but react. He pulled the pistol from its holster and fired three point-blank shots at the bear, hitting him all three times.

"When I turned around I wasn't even sure it was a bear," said Yeager. "I just seen something brown coming at me.

"It happened real fast," he said. "The first shot turned him, which is a good thing because he was four feet from me. The second shot went in the left side and out the right side. The third shot was an aimed one. I was pulling back for a fourth shot when he collapsed."

The .460 Smith & Wesson is set up for hunting and Yeager is planning to use it to hunt white-tail deer this fall in the Lower 48.

After making sure the bear was dead, Yeager called friend Robert Nash on his cell phone to tell him the news and solicit his help in skinning and butchering the bear.

"It's not really the way I envisioned getting my first grizzly," admitted the 43-year-old Yeager, who has lived in Alaska for 15 years.

The bear turned out to be a big one as Interior grizzlies go. It measured 6-feet 3-inches from nose to tail and squared 6 1/2 feet. The skull measured almost 21 inches.

"Its a nice looking griz," confirmed taxidermist Kevin Hickman of Alaskan Precision Taxidermy, who prepped the hide for tanning. "It'll make a nice rug."

The bear's hide had six holes in it, as each of Yeager's three shots exited the animal, said Hickman.

Fortunately for Yeager, he had picked up a grizzly bear tag at Fred Meyer the day before he shot the bear or else he would have had to turn the hide and skull of the bear over to the state as a defense of life and property shooting. Yeager said all the hoopla surrounding a pair of grizzly bears that were seen a week before on Farmer's Loop prompted him to pick up a grizzly tag.

Based on the fact the bear was coming up behind him, Yeager figures he probably passed the bear at some point.

"I had to have walked right past him," he said.

Yeager suspects there was a bait station somewhere in the vicinity that the grizzly had been visiting.

"(The grizzly bear) had dog food and some kind of meat in its intestines," he said. "I think he was close to (a bait station) and I picked the wrong trail to go on and he thought I was going to his food source."

Instead, the grizzly turned out to be a food source for Yeager. He dropped the meat from the bear off at B-Y Farms and had 100 pounds of Italian and breakfast sausage made out of it. The meat tastes good, he said, even though grizzlies are not known for their meat.

"I am a meat hunter," proclaimed Yeager. "If I kill it I eat it."

In all the excitement, Yeager never did end up going to the bathroom.

"I've still got the roll of toilet paper in the front of my truck," he said.

That's his story and he's sticking to it.

News-Miner outdoors editor Tim Mowry can be reached at 459-7587 or
Posts: 3591 | Location: wis | Registered: 21 April 2001

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I would go with a glock 20 10mm using Doubletaps ammunition or a revolver in a 41 mag or bigger caliber. Esox357.

I would modify my .45 ACP with a longer after market barrel, possible 6 inch, use the heaviest spring set I could get it to function with and use the "Air Force" bullet from Hornady, the Jacketed Flat Point 230 grain. I'd handload it with enough Blue Dot to chronograph 1000 fps and stop. This should be around 11 grains depending on barrel, brass, primers and so on. Standard ball at 830 fps will kill a moose, if applied to the neck. Mostly, I'd make the adjustment and get a forty caliber or above revolver made for modern handgun pressures and get serious with the advice given by others here. I put my 4" S&W model 24 .44 Special with 240 grain cast bullets at 1000 fps as a minimum. Elmer Keith recommended a 250 grain semiwadcutter cast bullet at 1200 fps .44 Special (17 grains of 2400) as his big game load, followed by a 255 grain semiwadcutter cast .45 Colt (18.5 grains of 2400) at 1040 fps. Both these loads are from 6 inch Smith & Wesson six-shot N-frame revolvers. A double action Redhawk Ruger with 5 1/2" barrel will do as well. I've killed 250 to 750 pound animals with these loads but I get a rifle if I have a choice for the dangerous ones. I put my .375 H&H back in the safe and used a .416 Taylor for my only brown bear, one shot one bear. It wasn't mentioned but why not get someone properly armed to hunt with you when you bow hunt in grizzly country?

quote:

Originally posted by "JB":
Again we are talking apples and oranges with incland and coast Alaskan Brown Bears compared to our grizzly bears here in Montana. Here in Montana the FWP will recomend a 12 ga against our grizzly bears.

That report you speak of is probably so old on the FWP Warden getting mauled because at that time they carried S&W mod 66 .357 mag revolvers.

I didn't say it did not happen, but usually when someone reports the facts a news link or story link is the proper way of reporting so as not to go by hearsay.

Coming from a LEO background we work with facts and hearsay is not facts, just an unconfirmed story.

The story about the game warden killing the bear with the .357 is probably 15-20 years old. I remember reading about it back when I was in college. Gets reprinted in one form or another every so often.

Check out this cartridge called the 45-08 which uses a standard 45ACP handgun with only recoil spring changes.

I have spoken with Gunnar of Armco Gunsmithing in Prince George, BC, Canada and it seems to work very well.

Here is his web site and his comments on his web site in regards to the 45-08. He also machine the 308 brass down to the 45-08 and they are available to purchase from him as well.

11/02/02. More news on the .45 ACP "bear Gun" aka the .45-08 Armco. Have been popping out 200 grain hard-cast semiwadcutters at 1450 from a 5" barrelled Para Ordnance. The trick was to use Hodgdon Long Shot powder. I'll tone it down to about 1350 which is lots, but the hot ones were no problem to shoot, even with a stock 18# recoil spring. You NEED a shock buff in the gun! More testing this winter. Too bad the bears are hibernating... I've been reading a bit of Elmer Keith stuff, and have concluded that a good hardcast lead bullet with a flat nose and sharp shoulders is probably the best to use. Gee, that's the one we use for IPSC.

02/05/02. How about the new .45/08 ARMCO pistol wildcat cartridge! This is essentially a .308 case cut down to .45 ACP length and neck reamed to make room for a Nosler 230 grain FMJ flat point bullet (and as much powder as we can cram in behind it. Alternately a 200 grain hard cast SWC bullet beautifully cast and sized by Smart Bullets is used, at higher speeds, of course. Results? So far, almost 1200 FPS from the 230 grain bullet with a 4 1/4" barreled Springfield Armory Defender with a 2 port compensator and a 22 pound recoil spring. That will translate into well over 1200 with a 5" barrel (testing soon) and starts to get REAL close to what you get from a 4" Model 29 in .44 Magnum. 50% (at least) more rounds and twice the controllability. Recoil is absolutely nothing compared to the big magnums, although it IS noticeable! Testing is ongoing and will include a .40Super barrel with 200 grainers at around 1300 FPS. Should be fun. I still like the .45/08 version, and even at the speeds we've achieved, see no excessive pressure signs with Federal 150 (large pistol) primers, which are notoriously soft. The cases, of course, are made to withstand pressures we'll never encounter without actually blowing these pistol primers to smithereens! I really think that a standard 5" 1911 or Para Ordnance, set up with the heaviest recoil springs that Wolff makes, will push 230 grain bullets past 1250, without being anywhere near as punishing to shoot as a hot heavy bullet .44 Magnum load in a Redhawk, a much bigger and heavier gun.

The idea came from the need for a "Bear Gun" for the north where a lot of people who move about in the woods for a living are now getting licenses to carry a handgun. Traditionally it's been a .44 Magnum or bigger, but some of these are a pain to carry comfortably all day, along with a lot of other necessary gear.

I ran into a prospector who insisted on carrying a Colt Officer's Model loaded with 230 grain hardball! Another carries a Ruger Super Redhawk in .454 Casull and has a permanently disabled shooting hand and the biggest flinch you ever saw. Somewhere in between there has to be a gun that has the penetration and sheer bullet weight to take down a bear, even a grizzly, and still be shootable by the average person.

There are, of course, others like this, such as the .45 Super, touted by Ace Custom .45's out of Texas, the .451 Detonics Magnum of some years ago, and the new Triton .450SMC, as well as the .460 Rowland pushed by Clark, and sold only as a compensated gun. It gets to 1300 FPS, but probably needs the comp! All these, by the way, are the same overall length, although case lengths differ. The problem, as we've discovered, is to find a powder that will give us the velocity we want without compressing enough to start pushing the bullet back out. That lets out the old magnum standby, Hodgdon H110, and actually all its contemporaries, such as N110 Vihtavuori, 296, 2400, 4227 IMR, etc. N105 seems to compress at about 1200, so may be OK - and as is usual with this excellent powder, shows no more pressure than an ordinary IPSC load. Others hit the "wall" at 1050 and 1150, and we're currently playing with Tite Group, which is compact enough, and has shown nice results in some reasonable .44 magnum loads.

OOOOPPPPSSSS.....

I didn't post the web sites address.. Here it is....

http://www.armco-guns.com/

quote:

Originally posted by adrook:
I wouldn't consider anything less than a heavy loaded .45 Colt or .44 Mag in a strong SA revolver like the Ruger Blackhawk or Freedom Arms firing 300-325gr hard cast Keith bullets at 1,200+ fps, and even that I think is marginal.

I agree completely!

A .45 ACP or .40 S&W is better than a rock but not much IMO...

Dennis

quote:

Originally posted by moki:
OOOOPPPPSSSS.....

I didn't post the web sites address.. Here it is....

http://www.armco-guns.com/

This is amazing!!!

I used to race motocross with Gunnar back in the 70's in Prince George! Worked at his shop in those days "K&G Small Engines"
What a small world after all....

Dennis