I don’t know if you went to it but a Facebook post linked in article gave more details:Originally Posted by GJM
https://www.facebook.com/glenn.marli...12029416290100
Including this photo of a rifle shot that didn’t penetrate the skull of the sow.
Supposedly 30-06. I find the fact that it did not penetrate through and through at point blank range unbelievable! Any comments or thoughts?
Last edited by Doc_Glock; 09-10-2019 at 10:15 PM.
I think that’s the entry wound.
“There is no growth in the comfort zone.”--Jocko Willink
"You can never have too many knives." --Joe Ambercrombie
I don’t know if you went to it but a Facebook post linked in article gave more details:
https://www.facebook.com/glenn.marli...12029416290100
Including this photo of a rifle shot that didn’t penetrate the skull of the sow.
Supposedly 30-06. I find the fact that it did not penetrate through and through at point blank range unbelievable! Any comments or thoughts?That is the entry wound. Bear skulls are tough, but not stop 30-06 rounds tough. I've talked to people that know those involved and that was the kill shot.
I've just wrapped up a year-long project on a remote 3,200-acre site in the northern California coast range. Not Alaska remote, but 45 minutes drive from the gate to the nearest retail cup of coffee. 1,100 feet elevation variation on site, mostly Douglas fir forest, some live oak woodland and grassland openings. Full protocol-level biology study to support a large CEQA document (California Environmental Quality Act), so I had a team of up to six biologists out there, generally in pairs, and spent a lot of time on site myself. This included multi-day camping trips and numerous incidents of night work, generally dusk to about 2:00 am. We rotated half a dozen game cameras through the site for the entire spring/summer/fall. So a pretty experienced crew with a lot of wildlife expertise, and a lot of time in the field.
A quick summary:
Since it's a bear thread, let's do that first. Considerable black bear sign, including scat so fresh on some of the night work that it was still steaming. Quite a few on the game cameras. They are common, but we never actually saw one the entire time. That's fairly typical here, where they're afraid of humans. Interestingly, the vast majority of the sign was on about 10% of the site, a heavily wooded area at lower elevation. Very little elsewhere.
Two mountain lion sightings, one by me and one by a pair of ornithologists doing nocturnal spotted owl surveys. My observation was at dusk, at about 100 meters, crossing a trail in front of me. Very slow, very casual, very much watching me, but never altering course as it moved across right to left. We didn't consider either encounter even remotely threatening, if anything they were high points of the time on site. I don't believe we got any on camera, although we're still verifying the downloads.
Numerous small carnivore/omnivore sightings... gray fox, bobcat, coyote. Many more on cameras or sign than actually seen.
Scattered feral pig sign and a couple of hits on the cameras. They aren't especially common here and these were not large individuals.
The primary threat actually encountered on site: Striped skunk are really, really common on trails at night. Several encounters most every night and it's amazing no one got sprayed, a testament to my teams awareness. Funniest encounter was the one that ran under the truck as we returned to it. Did it stop under there or keep going? The other person wouldn't go closer, so I had to go look. Fortunately it was long gone.
Primary potential threat: If anyone has seen the Netflix series "Murder Mountain" (I haven't, don't intend to, and have been told by multiple county sheriffs at the range that it's biased and sensationalized), that's 20 minutes from our project site. Alder Point is like zombie land, tweakers in the general store, burned out cars on the side of the road, street signs stolen. On Google Earth I count 12 greenhouses within a mile of our site, can see some of them from the ridgetop, pretty sure most are not permitted. Legalization is really changing things, shaking out the marginal players already but also encouraging a rash of rural robberies in harvest season. We never saw anything at threat level but everyone was paying attention.
Random firearms info: Our permits say remove invasive wildlife. If we'd seen a pig (I didn't), it would have been removed. I did see three very large bullfrogs which are invasive here. The first two went down to 22 LR in a Browning Buckmark with a red dot, clean one-shot kills on both at about 15 meters. The third one was really smart, couldn't even get close enough to aim before hearing a splash. Finally got it with a 25-foot seine, and took it out in a meadow to finish off. No 22 in the truck that day, so I'm able to say... 9mm 147 gr HST makes very short work of a six-inch bullfrog.
I carried a variety of firearms over dozens of visits. Mostly a S&W Mountain Gun in 45 Colt, 255 gr hardcast at about 900 fps; or a HK P2000 usually with 9mm Underwood Xtreme Penetrators and swapping out the mag for HST or Gold Dot before heading back into town. After the July 1 non-lead ammo regs kicked in, everything went to copper (Underwood XP or Barnes HP depending on the use) even though it's only required for actually "taking" wildlife. No issues carrying anything, although I stayed with tough finishes and nothing blued because of morning fog. A rifle was not an option, needed hands free for work, field notes, and sometimes for steep rugged terrain (1:1 slopes in dense conifer forest).
That's the latest wildlife report. No bear charges to report, and none likely, current field work is on a very civilized part of the coast highway and upcoming travel looks like Baton Rouge next month and then Australia in November. I do plan to get in the backcountry just for fun sometime soon but no time to make specific plans yet.
Last edited by Salamander; 09-11-2019 at 02:14 AM.
I'm pretty darn impressed with the conduct/performance of those hunters (read the FB summary).
“Remember, being healthy is basically just dying as slowly as possible,” Ricky Gervais
Okay, I thought as much but the FB comments from the photographer implied it was not through the skull. I can’t tell from the photo.
It is hard to do much analysis based on a FB post.
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
I think that's true of any subject, not just bear attacks...
I was into 10mm Auto before it sold out and went mainstream, but these days I'm here for the revolver and epidemiology information.
Agreed, the guy who supposedly helped recover the bear, and took the photos says it didn't penetrate skull and that a second shot to the chest was the fight stopper. Stories diverge.
I can't imagine any 30-06 round that would be stopped by a bear skull, but I don't know that much about rifles.
I have observed and heard of enough odd things with bullets, when they strike things, to not be surprised by most anything related to their terminal performance.
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
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