By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Black bear attacks, at least in Washington State, are very rare, but Tuesday’s incident on Mount Si, a genuine landmark, involving a sow with cubs that left a teen hiker slightly injured underscores the fact that—rare or not—they only need to happen to you once.
This explains why I never leave the pavement without a sidearm, and it’s typically a wheelgun of ample caliber to abruptly halt whatever unpleasantness has caused it to clear leather.
The bear encounter happened on the slopes of Mount Si, one of the most popular hiking spots in the Evergreen State with upwards of 100,000 visitors each year. It’s a peak located in east King County about 30 miles from Seattle, and it just happens to be a peak I personally stare at every day from my front yard. Wildlife officials wisely closed the Mount Si trail immediately, as noted by KING News.
When I cut firewood each spring, I’m always packing a handgun. It is typically a Model 19 Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum stoked with handloads pushing 158-grain JHPs out of a 2 ½-inch barrel. I run those bullets over a healthy dose of either Hodgdon’s H110 or Alliant (formerly Hercules) 2400. Lately, however, due to the scarcity of 2400, I’ve been experimenting with Accurate #9 and I recently looked up the available data for Alliant Power Pro MP300, having an unopened 1-pound canister in my workshop.
On other occasions, I’ll pack a .41 Magnum, either a Ruger Blackhawk or N-frame Smith & Wesson. I’ve recently come into possession of some now-discontinued 220-grain Speer JSPs, with the half-jacket and semi-wadcutter front end. This was and remains a superb projectile, with the caveat that you don’t download when using this pill. You’ve got to run it at full velocity, and I’ve settled on a stout charge of H110 to propel these bullets. The load is rather accurate.
Or, my sidearm might be a Ruger New Vaquero in .45 Colt, which I’ve discussed several times in this space.
Officers with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife were reportedly unable to locate the bear following the attack. But the fact it happened put the sow on the hit list. If she’s got cubs, well, that’s a problem for WDFW to solve.
Ever since the Fish & Wildlife Commission cancelled spring bear hunting four years ago, the black bear population has been increasing. Some outdoorsmen quietly suggest there are a lot more bruins in Washington’s wilds than the department estimates, which fall somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000.
Recently, Andy Walgamott, editor of the popular Northwest Sportsman magazine, reported on a “sentence buried deep in the Washington Fish and Wildlife Commission’s unanimously approved Game Management Plan update” which raised the potential for delaying the fall black bear hunt “out past Labor Day Weekend so as not to conflict with other recreationists in the woods and mountains in late summer.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, a fair number of early-season grouse hunters in Washington are convinced this is why the grouse opener was pushed back three years ago from Sept. 1 to Sept. 15, by a commission which has been making headlines in recent months for some members being far too cozy with anti-hunting groups.
I hunt grouse in September and early October, and I’m always packing a handgun with a great big hole at the muzzle end; you know, the kind of caliber with a loud muzzle blast and an impressive light-up-the-darkness muzzle flash.
Rare or not, as mentioned above, one only needs to be the victim of an animal attack once in life to change one’s perspective about wild animals. You don’t have to be stomped while trying to pet the nice buffalo to quickly learn why we call them “wild animals.” Bears, bison, elk, mountain goats, mountain lions and other wild creatures are not house broken!
Within the past few years, again in my immediate region, there have been two mountain lion attacks, including one fatal incident. In an environment where things have teeth and claws, my policy is to have something with which to fight back.
Which brings us back to wheelguns. Let’s look at some interesting ballistics.
According to the Hodgdon Annual Manual, a 158-grain Hornady XTP bullet—which I consider to be a dandy projectile for the .357 Magnum—will clock 1,591 fps when launched by 16.7 grains of H110 or Winchester 296, ignited by a magnum small pistol primer.
I don’t load my .357s quite that hot—down about a half-grain—and one loses some velocity out of a short barrel, but trust me on this: At close range, that bullet is going to hit like a sledgehammer.
Lately, I’ve been running 215-grain hard cast lead semi-wads from Rim Rock Bullets over in Polson, Montana ahead of 16.0 grains of Accurate #9—the maximum recommended load listed by Hodgdon’s Annual Manual—out of my Model 57 Smith & Wesson .41 Magnum, which warps along at better than 1,300 fps over my chronograph. That’s enough to get any bear’s attention, although I’m more alert to mountain lions in my region. Now, with a fresh supply of the Speer 220-grainers, I’ll be running loads capable of clocking better than 1,400 fps out of a 6-inch S&W barrel, of the 6 ½-inch tube on my Ruger Blackhawk.
My .45 Colt loads, featuring a 255-grain Hornady RNLFP bullet ahead of HJP-38 or CFE Pistol (ignited by a standard Winchester or Remington large pistol primer) will scoot out of the barrel at about 850-900 fps. Those big, slow-moving hunks of lead do discourage misbehavior in the wilds! I also reload Hornady’s 250-grain Gold Dot hollowpoint for this sixgun, and they make an impressive hole.
The black bear incident on Washington’s Mount Si might pale in comparison to the grizzly attack in Montana’s Glacier National Park last month, but it was a wake-up call for those who might think it’s okay to offer a treat to the cute bear cub.
Thankfully, I was never that stupid.
