r/canadaguns • u/dke783 • May 07 '26

Shooting Have you ever had a bear incident?

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Honest question: have you ever had to fend off an aggressive bear in Canada? (hunting or otherwise) What happened,​ and what worked for your response? ​​

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u/Girthquake2654 May 07 '26

Yes sir at about 16 then (hopefully) never again. We have a permanent camp set up on some familial land out in northern sask where the black bears are as common as coyotes. Normally theyre no problem as we mind ourselves and they mind themselves but this one year we had twins that were about the size of yearlings(?) who were very curious and very unafraid of people. After probably a half dozen encounters with them one day instead of false charging and running away at the first challenge the bigger and braver one starting skulking around and stallking towards me/my mom with a lot more intent. wouldnt leave when we shouted and made a presence so we decided if theyre getting this comfortable making advances on us and testing the waters we should deal with the issue.

While it was advancing my mom grabbed my great grandads old cooey 20 guage and put a slug in and passed it over to me to put it down. Hit its chest/shoulder area pretty immediately fatal but because i failed to disable the limb which a shoulder shot or instant drop he dropped then got up and ran about 20 feet before falling again and staying there.

Definitely a big formative memory and a huge part of the reason im so pro gun when it comes to back country stuff. Sorry for textwalling or if parts were unclear ill probably come back and edit this when im less stoned

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u/escv_69420 May 09 '26

See, look everyone. A real hostile bear encounter defused by a child with a 20g! Stop tweaking out that you need a .50 and two backup 10mms to go walk your dog in Sudbury.

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u/Slip-49a May 11 '26

He's talking a yearling.... not a fully grown bear.