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When in Alaska, we had an experience with a blackbear in a remote area. Maybe an area that animals had not seen humans for some time. this was in the early '70s. We were flown in to do essay work for a mineral claim. This was in South central Alaska. The area was not a hospital one for humans to live with all the marsh and muskeg. It did have a few bears. We landed on the lake late afternoon and set up a makeshift camp to spend the night and then head to the river area for the work the next day. During the night (say 3 in the morning, but it was daylight due to the summer sun) there was low grunts and sounds of equipment being shoved around. On waking there was the black bear about ten feet from the closest person in a sleeping bag. The bear was ripping through back backs and boxes piled up as it must have smelled the food cooked the night before.
All began yelling and then throwing sticks at the bear, but this just irritated him. He was a strange looking bear. Not very fat and with legs that seemed overly long for a bear. Scraggaly coat.
He didn't back off and kept coming toward us. One of my friends had the then new 1895 marlin in .45-70. This was loaded with jacketed handloads .405 remington bullets loaded to about the 1700 or so mark. Pretty potent.
The bear turned broad side to grab at another pile of stuff and my friend fired at the neck but in the rush hit the upper shoulder. The bear rolled but got strait up and started to raise on it's hind legs and the 45-70 roared agained with the bullet hitting center chest and nearly summersaulted the bear backward. That was all to that. Next day, some very stringy/tough bear roast in the slow cooker pot.
Sometimes you don't get the bambi reaction of run and hide from these bears!

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"A hunter should not use a rifle that will kill an animal when everthing goes right; you should use one that will do the job when everything goes wrong." 88MauSporter

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