CJ:
Dang, those are some big bruins. How hard is it to get a bear tag there?
You buy your hunting license and when buying it, you say you want to purchase the bear tag as well. No drawing, nothing! I just bought mine a couple days ago when I was in PA. The rifle season is only 3 days long in most parts of the state with another 3 days for archery. No baiting, and no dogs. There are about 3000 bears killed per year in PA. You either have to be really lucky or put on really large drives. One side of my extended family puts on a drive of 20-25 guys every year on the mountain above their family farm. They usually kill 3-5 bears with one going over 400 each year. Bears in areas where they get hunted hard are smart! You literally have to step on them to get them up and running and they will wedge themselves in the thickest, nastiest briars, thickets and tangles in the area! Some of the north central counties also have a bear season which coincides with the last few days of the first week of rifle season for deer. They started that a few years back because of the every increasing bear/human conflicts.
I've one handgun that I woudn't hesitate to carry in those woods, chambered for .480 Ruger. I bought it from a buddy who didn't like the recoil, but I don't think it's bad at all. I wouldn't use it for a day long target session, but a running a box or two thru it isn't bad. It's relatively accurate, on a good day I can shoot 3"-4" groups @ 50 Yds iron sights.
I carry my duty .40 S&W. Probably not the best choice, but it's a gun I am intimately familiar with, shoot quite well and know if I got a bear coming at me I can probably put bullets on target. Some of the bigger revolvers, I am not quite so confident with. In a lot of the bear attack studies involving grizzlies, many of the individuals had firearms, but were still killed. They were too busy trying to find the bear in the scope of their rifle rather than point shooting. Just a little bit of practice, at close ranges say 10 yards and under you can effectively put bullets on target by simple point shooting. The extended family that puts the bear drives on likes to use a 12 gauge pump gun loaded with slugs once they have a bear hit and start tracking. You can sling a lot of hot lead at an injured bear that may have the idea of ripping you to shreds before you finally kill him. Last year they saw a mother bear and her 6 cubs, yes 6! They decided to pass her and her cubs up although it would have been completely legal to have shot one of all of them...
