By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Okay, so in the Pacific Northwest, early spring is firewood cutting time, and the other day while visiting the Ranger station to get a permit, we had an interesting chat with the district ranger about bears, mountain lions and unfortunate “interactions” between them and us humans.
At this point, I mentioned never going into the woods to cut firewood without taking along a sidearm. As discussed previously in this column, in my neck of the woods, there have been two cougar attacks in recent years, one of them fatal. Mother Workman may have raised a homely kid, but he’s not stupid.
Off pavement, there might be a .38 Special, .357 Magnum, .41 Magnum or a .45 Colt on my hip, even while the chainsaw is running.
Granted, a roaring chainsaw can make for a formidable defensive weapon in a pinch, but that requires extremely close contact with something equipped with claws and teeth. Thanks all the same, I’d rather not go there.
Besides, the saw isn’t always running, and one still might have a problem when one is merely splitting rounds or stacking firewood in the truck.
A couple of years ago, one of the local Forest Service campgrounds had to be closed mid-summer because of black bear problems. That appears to have been solved with the installation of food boxes at each campsite, but it doesn’t prevent bears with a surly nature from becoming pests, and as I mentioned to the ranger, on one of my visits to the campground, I ran across cougar tracks.
While the .38 Special is a decent cartridge, the .357 Magnum is even better. A glance at any reloading manual showing the different ballistics of the two cartridges clears up any doubts. At close range with my 2 ½ -inch Model 19, a 158-grain JHP can launch at more than 1,250 feet-per-second, and that’s going to get immediate attention, where a .38 Special pushing a 125-grain bullet around 1,000 fps might not get the same results due to penetration issues.
Now, graduating to the .41 Magnum, a 210-grain hunk of lead clocking somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,400 to 1,500 fps packs a wallop. Even the muzzle blast will be adequate to discourage most critters.
And then comes the .45 Colt. My loads can launch a 255-grain lead bullet at around 900 fps or a little better out of a long barrel, but we’re talking about a pretty good sized projectile which can cause a lot of hurt and tissue damage.
I’ve had a couple of close encounters with bears, and I’ve seen bobcats and at least one mountain lion in close proximity, and never had to fire a shot because they seemed focused on something besides me. But with the amount of time I spend off the pavement, there’s always the nagging question about the law of averages and Murphy’s Law, and I’m no backwoods attorney, so to speak.
I cannot think of any time when a person shooting a predatory animal in self-defense has ever resulted in criminal charges. This doesn’t cover obvious cases of poaching; we’re talking about an actual life-threatening situation. One of my acquaintances, Dean Weingarten, writes frequently about defensive shootings against bears, mainly, at AMMOLAND. It makes for some interesting reading.
For right now, I’m mixing chainsaw gas and making sure I’ve got fresh handloads for whatever gat I’m packing. Invariably in the woods, it will be a wheelgun. Relying on a revolver has become a force of habit out in the forest.
Of course, all of this preparation does include pleasant time at the gun range. Maybe I’ve discovered something, eh?
