Having spent a short time in Alaska courtesy of Uncle Sugar, forget the handgun. The locals advise to have a 12 guage loaded with slugs on hand. In addition, I talked to a guy that was charged by a grizzly and was lucky enough to drop it with the last round from his .303.
Chuck, I would have agreed with you untill the 500 S&W came out. With a 12 ga. and a 1 oz. slug your bullet weight is 437.5 gn`s. You can get good bullets up to 700 gn`s for the .500 and push them up to 1,200 fps. and alittle more. I`ll go with the heaver lead. Personal choice.
Bear load The biggest,heaviest bullet revolver that you can shoot great is better than a even bigger handgun that you can't shoot as good or are semi-scared to shoot. I can see no circumstance where my .454 casull loaded with hard cast bullets wouldn't do the trick. I've used this cartridge for years,can rely on instinct/training instead of having to think about anything except shot placement,and am very familiar with it. Virtally every animal on earth has been taken with this cartridge in expert hands sucessfully. Why should I change to the s&w 500???
Bear rounds I bought the .460 and the .500 when they first came out, the .460 is a controllable hunting round, I liked it very much, the .500 is a howitzer and not alot of fun to shoot, I have an 8 3/8 inch barrel on the .500, I could not amagine a shorter barrel on that thing, It will do the job on any bear but it is really for hunting T-Rexes, I shoot the .460 alot I'm with Stalkingbear on this one a .454 is more gun than you need in the bear woods!
