Camping with guns

DavidO said:
I should have given more information. I occasionally car camp and sometimes go to semi secluded locations. Living in Southern California doesn't allow easy access to totally isolated areas and obtaining CCWs. I have taken self defense pistol courses but have never been in the military or in armed combat. My favorite pistol is a 1911. Great for CQB self defense but not so for bear. One of my instructors said, "It's better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6." All of you have offered interesting perspectives for which I am grateful.
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Not trying to be a jerk here.
I am asking the question because I really don't know.
How common are bear in Southern California?
 
I love guns and camping so why not combine the two!

Which gun depends on location and type of camping but generally a Colt 1911 Government 45 acp feels nice next to my stuff-sack pillow. If I'm hiking or plan on carrying a handgun on me I find the 1911 too heavy and would switch to something ligher weight such as my 9mm or even the LCP.
 
coyotebc said:
Not trying to be a jerk here.
I am asking the question because I really don't know.
How common are bear in Southern California?
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In the parks bears are very common and encounters should be expected. To not see one would be unusual! Either save the bears and stay out of the parks or kill the bears so your kids can go in the parks...just a matter of time before someones kid gets killed. Sadly, it won't change until a politicians kid gets killed before they they change the whole circus thing going on in California parks these days! Bus loads of tourists come to see the bears and other "wild animals". It's not wilderness anymore. I describe it more like a real busy "parking lot".
 
sambo. said:
omg. i just have to laugh at American's love of huge calibre guns.

the "standard" rifle round used in Australia is the .223. it's the calibre of choice for vast the majority of professional 'roo shooters.

there are quite a few who use a .222. i myself have taken >75kg boars with a single .222 shot. it all comes down to marksmanship.

the .22-250 is seeing some more regular use among the roo shooter fraternity, but the .223 and .222 are more popular simply because loads are so cheap.

in bigger calibres, the venerable .303 British has a cult status in Australia (it was the weapon of choice in WWI and WWII and is still in service in the Australian military to this day).

bottom line is: it doesn't really matter what calibre you shoot. a well placed shot with a smaller calibre is going to do substantially more damage than a badly placed shot (or a flat out miss) with a cannon.

marksmanship > rifle power.
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There is considerable difference in a hunting round and a defensive round when you are talking about dangerous game.
An adrenalin pumped bear can take a significant amount of damage before dying.
I live in a country where it is almost impossible to get a pistol permit for wilderness carry.
So for me a pistol is not an option.
A 55 grain bullet shot from a 223 caliber rifle has an almost zero chance of stopping let alone killing an enraged bear.
I am totally comfortable hunting with a 308 in grizzly country and I have done it on many occasions (a 303 brit is comparable to a 308 imo).
However I prefer my winchester model 94 in 450 marlin for a couple of reasons;
It comes to my shoulder quicker then any other gun I own.
Its ghost ring sites come on to target faster then any other gun I own.
It is just as reliable as any of my bolt actions.
It is of sufficient caliber to have a legitimate chance of stopping a grizzly if I do my part right.

This gives me comfort when sleeping in a tent when I have seen grizzly walking in the area.
 
Sambo: another thing the above post didn't mention, is that in many states it's illegal to hunt with anything less than a .24 caliber (.243 Winchester) -- no matter how much you like high velocity .22s. It has nothing to do with any perceived skill.

Also consider that to Americans, the .30'06 has the same cult status here as the .303 does in Oz, and for the same reason -- got us through two world wars and Korea.
 
To my way of thinking, this issue involves compromise. Ease of carry vs. size of weapon; proficiency vs. pure power. Too bulky a gun, and it either won't be with me all the time, or won't be carried in a way that I can easily get to it; too small and lightweight of a gun, and I might as well just throw rocks (well, almost). For self defense against humans, I'd prefer something in the .357/.40/.45 acp range, but I've never felt especially underarmed with a .22 or .38. With humans, imo it's proficiency more than raw power that counts. Where I now live (Western PA) the critters I am most likely to need a weapon for are coyotes, dogs, black bear under 200 lbs, and the occasional wild pig. And the odds of ever needing to shoot one of the aforementioned is slight. I feel comfortable with my .357 or .45LC and appropriate loads. Having said that, however, I do feel that the best all around choice for a woods gun is a .44 magnum with a 4" or 6" barrell. I just don't happen to own one right now.

Sort of the same with rifles. My personal favorite compromise in rifles between convenience and caliber is a Savage 99 in .300 Savage.
 
coyotebc said:
Not trying to be a jerk here.
I am asking the question because I really don't know.
How common are bear in Southern California?
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My only motive for ever entering this thread, was to convince the original poster DavidO that he does indeed live in country that contains dangerous predators with 4 legs, not just 2, and he needs to arm himself accordingly. I know and appreciate his local conditions, where most of the rest of you are clearly oblivious. Believe it or not, Los Angeles is surrounded by mountains, that are full of bears and cats (and yes illegal pot farms)! There is a news story every week, about bears wondering down into neighborhoods in the foothills:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lan...utside-long-beach-aquarium-to-protest-bp.html

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/05/bear-hides-out-in-tree-near-oxnard-condo-complex.html (Those are palm trees in the picture dude!)

http://www.dfg.ca.gov/news/issues/lion/attacks.html (Los Angeles, Orange, Santa Barbara, and San Diego Counties are all in So California. Source has not been updated since 2007.)

I look out my window at San Gorgonio mountain which is 11,500', and gets more snow than most places in the country....yet I am only a hour away from downtown Los Angeles. My local mountains: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=773346 (uh, that's a zoo bear) . I see more bears in a month than most of you will see in a lifetime (for simplicity, we'll just ignore all the years I lived in Alaska and British Columbia!). Most likely, most of you will only ever see bears or lions in ballgames....yet everyone from the Nevada desert to Australia, seems to be an expert on what to carry in bear country.......
 
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I have an anthro paper from a few years ago somewhere in the moving boxes that did a population study of coyotes in LA (city, not county) and came up with 50,000!!!!

Granted, coyotes aren't the most dangerous of critters, but it's a good example of hidden wilderness.

I've spent a lot of time in southern california. There are bears, yes. But not really that many, and packing weaponry for bear shooting really isn't, IMO, necessary. There are places and times in socal where it isn't a bad idea, but it's pretty rare.

The crime rate is another story, though!

Where I get irritated is with the idea that because someone acupunctured a bear with 3 .308 rounds, you need a .454 to take a walk in a san diego county canyon. Okay?

Foot pound calculations are fun, and useful, but far from the whole story. To apply an analogy, and I don't want anyone to take this too far, there's a common phenomenon with airguns called "acupuncture". What it is is that you can take a 12 foot pound .177 caliber airgun with a pointed pellet and shoot a varmint and have it run away, with a clean through and through chest cavity wound. The same critter, with a similar range of foot pound and a .22 dome pellet, gets knocked flat and is DOA.

That's acupuncture.

Applying this to the difference, for example, between a 135 grain JHP in a .357 magnum and a 240 grain lead SWC from a .44 special with a Keith loading is significant.

Again, in my area, I am more likely to carry a .32acp for small carry or my .38 revolver (recon's girl gun). The .38 is pushing big fat SWCs, too. and it's fine for the environment and the shotshells put out a lot more snake shot than a .22 (similar arguments with the .32 over a .22 even given similar raw foot pounds. 71 grain FMJ is going to make me a lot happier than a 36 grain lead HP or even the 60 grain subsonics)

I'm out in the country. I was perfectly happy with a .22 revolver in northern california, but I'm also reasonably aware of bear avoidance techniques. We *do* get cougars once in a while and coyotes are a rancher's pest. (though the one we saw out at Grimes point yesterday was so damned pretty, full red coat and well fed.)


The real problem with california and bears is population pressure. I used to hike in CA without permits, entrance fees, "entrance capacities" and such crap. You can't do that these days, there's more people hiking the gabriels on an average weekend than live in my county out here in nevada.
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Where legal, always have some handy firearm along.

If you are in the middle of nowhere with a gun, what happens if friendlies accidentally get shot? Have you got a couple millitary surplus type bandages along? I do, in my hunting pack.

That way, you not only have the ability to cause holes, but to fix them, as well.
 
reconranger said:
I don't really get the love fest for the 10 mm. For humans, it is a bit much, and for bears it isn't enough. If you look at the energy (ft-lb) on the Hornaday web site ( http://www.hornady.com/ ), at around the 550 range it is in there with the .357 mag, which is marginal for black bears, and a fools caliber for griz.

While I will carry a .357 when I need to travel very light in black bear country, a .44 mag is in the 1000 ft-lb range and probably what one should really be carrying in black bear country. Lots of small handy and ultralight .44 revolvers out there these days, so size and weight aren't really a good excuse not to carry a .44, like in the old days! (I took my own advice, and have had a Ruger Alaskan .44 on order for some months now, but just can't find one. Ruger is supposed to do a run of them sometime this fall. I may at some time in the future, also consider the ultralight S&W's????)

In griz country, the .454 is the minimum. It comes in at around 1,800 ft-lbs which is more than 3X what the 10mm or .357 can crank out and almost 2X the .44, and the .460/.500 come in at around 2,200 ft-lbs.

Also....keep in mind that short barrels eat away at velosity, so that will also eat away at energy calculations....so all these figures are very optomistic!!!
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That's why I mentioned black bears not Grizz bears. And Double Tap brand ammo, 750+ ft-lbs.
 
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The acupuncture comment is interesting ... I used to shoot a lot of pigeons with air guns back in the day. I bought some pointed pellets and quickly found out that for whatever reason, the wadcutters did a much better job with them.

If you are dealing with a big pissed off hog (the ones where you are most going to need the backup), I think that I would go with more velocity, however. Maybe I am overestimating the tough hides and bones of the front part of a boar that is coming at you, but I would want somthing that I know is going to get good penetration.

I'm surprised how many stories of hunting that people are citing as evidence in talking about defensive shooting. I don't doubt any of the stories, but what does it prove to say that a certain caliber is able to kill a calm animal (especially something like a deer that doesn't have the build of more dangerous animals) with a well-placed broadside shot? I mean, a 30-06 is not exactly a wimpy caliber, but how many deer have you seen take a 30-06 round right through the shoulders and just make a bolt for it into the brush (where they die of course)? I have seen my fair share, and all of that movement after the taking the shot says to me that if this were an animal that was coming at me, it would not have been stopped before it could do whatever damage it wanted. And that is not taking into account that we are dealing with an unsuspecting deer in a calm mood, and not a much bigger and more sturdily built boar with enough adrenaline and testosterone flowing through its veins to allow it to keep coming after taking anything but a VERY well placed shot or a less well placed shot that has enough power to break some bones and/or immediately create a deep, wide cavity that will fill up with blood. And as far as the well placed shot, obviously the more proficiency that you have with the weapon the better, but if you can put a shot right in betwen the eyes of a boar who is bearing down on you with its head and body moving as it is on the dead run and you are just getting a big adrenaline rush, "well placed" doesn't give you enough credit.

I don't know what all of this means as far as carrying a gun. I know I'm not going to be toting a safari gun becuase there is a 1 in a million chance that I might run into bear that wants to tussel. But if you are putting a big charging boar or black bear down in its tracks with a .357, I would call you either a very good shot (i.e. able to hit brain or spinal column under pressure on a moving target) or very lucky. A shot to the chest cavity may do the trick, but there is a substantial risk that it won't even slow it down.
 
Kirk_Ferentz said:
The acupuncture comment is interesting ... I used to shoot a lot of pigeons with air guns back in the day. I bought some pointed pellets and quickly found out that for whatever reason, the wadcutters did a much better job with them.

If you are dealing with a big pissed off hog (the ones where you are most going to need the backup), I think that I would go with more velocity, however. Maybe I am overestimating the tough hides and bones of the front part of a boar that is coming at you, but I would want somthing that I know is going to get good penetration.
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I did actually address that a touch when I mentioned the 7.62x25 hot loads.

You won't get acupuncture on a boar with a frontal chest shot! :D anything capable of that will be moving at velocities that will pulp anyone within 3 meters.

I'm definitely not saying that penetration is unimportant, I'm just addressing that the common "foot pounds means everything" is full of....holes :D
 
I suspect that most of the stories tend to hunting, simply because many people have hunted, but few have fought off a charging bear or hog.

There was an EXTREMELY interesting writeup from a bunch of vets in S. Africa some years ago. It seems that there was a herd of something (it's been a while, sorry) that had to be wiped out because of some disease. I'm talking perhaps 100 animals.

The vets "hunted" them, and kept very meticulous notes on each kill. Some kills absolutely dropped the animal, some resulted in running for a while before dying, etc. Every animal had an autopsy.

What they all found in common, was that all of the animals that dropped immediately had MASSIVE hemoraging of the brain and other organs. Keep in mind, this all was done with a variety of rifles, calibers, and loads. There wasn't a pattern.

What they theorized, and it's as good a theory as I've ever heard, was that if the bullet hit during a heartbeat, it over-pressurized the arteries, causing massive damage. If it hit during a time when the heart wasn't beating/pumping, then this didn't happen.

Just a theory, but an interesting one. If it's true, then there's more to chance than I would like to admit.
 
Never heard the hemorraging theory. I don't buy into the foot-pounds theory either (although it is certainly relevant). I'm not an expert on stopping power, but from what I do know, the focus seems to be more on what the bullet does to what it hits rather than on the ballistics of the bullet itself Obviously they are related, but different sized/shaped projectiles at different speeds hitting different parts of the body can actually accomplish much the same thing ... such as the yawing effect of a fast, small bullet that ends up doing much the same thing as a big slow bullet ... I think of it as finding a recipe of velocity, calibre, bullet geometry, bullet materials, bullet placement, and of course the physical properties of whatever type of body the bullet is hitting.

The best thing I have read on this (and I'm sure it is quite dated) is the analysis of the dade county fbi shooting back in the 80's. If I remember correctly, they concluded that stopping power (and here we are talking about stopping humans) comes down to mostly a big, deep cavity that is created and will fill up with blood. I believe that report spawned the birth of the 10mm and later .40 S&W to replace 9mm.

The hunting examples ... I suppose they are relevant, but to me, they are relevant for all the opposite reasons than the ones people are talking about. Like the story of the viet nam vets, my experience is that even if you shoot a deer/antelope with a big powerful 30 calibre rifle, who knows what will happen after that bullet hits (other than hitting it in the brain/spinal column, which, from my experience and common sense about physiology means that it is going to go down immediately). So, one thing that I have always thought is that if you are ever in a situation where you want to stop dangerous game before they can get to you, you want quite a bit of overkill. For something like a big grizzly or brown bear, I honestly don't think there is a pistol out there that could assure that a decently placed shot will put them down within a few seconds (there is the story about the guys finding multiple .44 mag slugs still stuck in their hide!). And it sounds like a shot that doesn't stop them is only going to make matters worse for you. For boar, I would think decently placed .44 mag would put them down pretty quickly a high percentage of the time, and is it possible to get them more pissed off than they already are if they are already charging at you? .357 though... hope the boar is more in the 150 pound than the 350 pound range.
 
Of course we go armed when out in the woods (or desert); why the heck wouldn't you???

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swamp said:
Glock 20 in 10mm.

Buy Double Tap beartooth loads, they will work on people just as well as they will the black bears they were meant for.

The Hot loaded 10mm Glock is the most powerful Glock made. More so than the .45.
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+1000. I carry the G29 myself, it conceals better in my fanny pack. That's my woods carry. When car camping, any combo of G29, my G19, Ruger LCR (in pocket holster), and/or my Remington 870 youth in 20 ga.
 
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