Grizzly Bear vs M1911 rounds?

Oh, you'll hurt him. He'll feel pain.

But you'll still get mauled.

Pistols have a very poor record of stopping bear attacks.

Odds of you getting 5 rounds on target while you're either being mauled or charged by a grizzly are about the same as winning powerball. Even if you do place 5, grizzly are 1. big 2. tough and most importantly 3. insane.

The 45 is a good man stopper, but they are a very low energy round and man off the shelf loads are designed to penetrate a man size/density target or paper. Man size/density into the chest of a grizzly gets you about to the breastbone, but not through it into anything important.

So you have 1. big 2. tough 3. insane and now 4. pissed off. Take 3 multiplied by 4 and you're going to have a bad day.

It's not a matter of a bear being invincible, they're not. It's a matter of choosing the wrong tool for that particular job.

Sure, but for bear I wouldn't use any FMJ round. Use hunting ammo say in the 165 to 180 grain soft-point category. The advantages your Garand .30-06 would have over say my Steyr Mannlicher Pro Hunter in the same caliber are ammo capacity and rate-of-fire. If faced with a charging Grizzly you could fire that semi-auto a lot quicker than I could turn the bolt on my '06! Then again if in the presence of a charging Grizzly bear I might even surprise myself and work that bolt near as quick as a semi-auto! Of course mine would be loaded with 180 grain premium hunting bullets rather than FMJ ammo. In the same situation your advantage would also be 8 rounds vs. the 5 in my hunter. Seriously, the only thing I would do if in bear country is to load hunting ammo in that Garand. H Poster above made a good point about not loading heavier than 165 grain rounds in a Garand without modifications. These are the heaviest I'd use in a standard Garand. H

We had a guy at Lake Tahoe shoot a bear in the head with hunting rifle. The bullet bounced off the bear's head. That was a rifle so I would think a 45 ACP would do the same. Bullet placement obviously is important. Perhaps wait for the bear to open his mouth or rear up on his hind legs and shoot for the chest. I would empty the entire magazine on it.

Or you can get a 454 Casull Ruger Alaskan. That definitely has the power to stop a Grizzly.

Nothing is "invincible" to any bullet. The important factor is 'stop time'.

With a Grizzly, you are talking about 600 lb.s and up of aggressive, heavily muscled bear.

Face it, pistol rounds are designed to stop 200 lb. men.

NO bullet is going to guarantee a quick stop, and in the even of an actual attack, forget

that '10 rnd.s' business. - You'll have time for one or two, maybe three rounds, if you're lucky.

The good news is that we're not on the bear's menu. They really don't want to fight you .

Usually a 'diplomatic attitude' 'I don't want to fight but will if I have to, and I'm wary and departing' usually works.

A griz can run over 40 mph you wont have time for 10 rounds.

Bad idea! Look I could point out how high power rifles with 4 + times the energy of the .45 acp failed to stop a grizzly but you would have to see that to understand. Fact is the .45 acp in a 1911 has failed to stop black bears that weighed just over 200 lbs. Sure the black bear went off and died but that’s not the point. The point is the bear had time to kill you. And grizzlies get mad as hell when you hurt them. I have hunted big bears for years and seen a griz get enraged from being shot. Forest service and Federal wildlife biologists have used rubber buck shot to run bears off. But that dosent always work either and it only works because it startles them not anger them by injury.

Every year in Alaska I meet some greenhorn new to my state who shows me their 9mm or 10mm, or .45 acp etc pistol and says; “this will take care of that bear!” And the locals laugh their buts off at him. Such guns will just get you into deep trouble with a griz. You would be better off just shooting it into the ground to make noise to hopefully run the bear off. But if you shoot him with a 1911 in the head the bullet will likely glance off his skull and now hes REALLY mad!

Every now and then a rouge griz will be killed up here and when they skin him out they find lots of buckshot, pistols bullets just under his hide and the bear lived for years with that there. Its because a griz is a tough son of a gun.

I'd bet you could take him down with a few quick headshots, but do you really want to take the chance? I've heard that full power .44 Magnum are the bare minimum, and there have been many people who have said that they wouldn't trust it. Black bears? Sure, but those grizzly's are scary...

At the same time, you hear of quite a few people who have killed all sorts of bears of all sizes, with a simple .22 rifle. With smaller calibers, it's really more about getting lucky...

Actually, now that I think about it, I bet with a .45, or preferable, maybe a .357 magnum with soft points, you might be able to cripple the bear if you shoot it in the leg, but you'd have to hit bone. Now this would be a last resort, but in a time of panic, could one make the shot?

You could also try making him wince in pain and run away by swatting him with a hickory switch, but I wouldn't recommend either. Moreover, there's no way you can get five rounds into one. The only justification to shoot would be in self-defense in a charge, and you aren't likely to get off a second shot before he's on you, much less a fifth. They're fast.

Possibly but the odds are you're going to be dead before you squeeze off 5-10 rounds.

another contestant who has never seen a bear out side a zoo.

Sure... 45 ACP, and to keep it legal acording to the Geneva Accords shoot him with FMJ....