Many readers are interested in how various handgun calibers have performed in defense against bears. This is a complicated subject. Sometimes, any caliber will do. Sometimes a level of power may be required. Sometimes, a level of accuracy or speed may be required. Many permutations exist. The most important aspect, if a confrontation occurs, is to have a firearm available, easily and quickly accessible. The specific caliber is less important. These updates include all the incidents we have been able to document to the date of the update, after several years of intense searches. We always appreciate readers who help us document more cases.
Here are all the cases which have been documented where .22 rimfire caliber handguns were fired in defense against bears. The .22 Long Rifle caliber has dozens of loads. It has not been possible to know which particular load was used in each case. Some .22 Short loads are more powerful than some .22 Long Rifle loads. The same applies, to a lesser extent, with .22 Magnum rimfire loads. If instances of the use of .17 caliber or 5mm rimfire are found, they will be included with the .22 rimfire information. The 11 incidents are listed in chronological order. Eight are .22 LR, three are .22 Magnum, there is one failure, against a polar bear (fatal), one success against a brown/grizzly bear, and eight successes against black bears. Three people suffered relatively minor injuries. Dacy Staver was killed after her husband drove the black bear away, with warning shots from the .22. Then he left to get help. He took the .22 handgun with him. The black bear came back and killed, then started eating, Dacy.
1936 Alaska: .22 rimfire From More Alaskan Bear Tales Page 267 Reference January 31, 1936, black bear
A black bear with cubs had chased Mr. Nutter up a tree. When the sow came after him, he was able to shoot and kill it with a .22 pistol.
The bear bit him at least twice before he killed it. The pistol was a .22 semi-auto.
1960 .22 black bear, Lake north of Minto, Alaska
In 1960 Francis Cannon and her two friends flew into a lake a little north of Minto, Alaska. They were on a fishing trip. After fishing, the setting down to lunch when they were attacked by a black bear, who rushed out of the brush and grabbed Francis. From Alaskan Bear Tales pages 107-108:
Johnson picked up a stick, and pummeled the brute, and the bear dropped the woman and charged him. It was waylaid by the lunch, which it began to devour.
In the meantime, Fletcher got a .22 pistol from the plane, walked to within a few feet of the animal, and killed it.
I suspect it was not a casual stroll to the plane, or a slow walk back to the bear.
1962 Summer .22 LR Grizzly Bear Montana (near Glacier National Park)
The incident with the grizzly bear happened in the 1962 spring trapping season. Another worker was helping Chuck then. I met the guy once but have forgotten his name. A 500-pound male grizzly bear was caught in the steel jawed trap and took it and the tangled up drag about two miles where the bear hid in an aspen patch. Chuck and his helper tracked the grizzly on foot. The helper was armed with a 12 gauge shotgun and all Chuck had was his nine shot Harrington and Richardson Model 939, double action, .22 revolver in a holster on his belt.The grizzly charged and Chuck stood still waiting for his helper to shoot. He looked around and the helper was running off with the shotgun. Chuck turned to run and tripped over a tree root and fell to the ground. The 500-pound male grizzly ran up to Chuck and stood up on his hind legs over him with the trap on a front paw. Chuck pulled out his .22 revolver and fired all nine shots in it. Some missed, some glanced off the grizzly’s skull and one went into an eye socket, killing the bear.
Early 1960s, Montreal River, Keweenaw County, Michigan, black bear, .22 magnum, spring.
This event happened to James Maierle, a well know educator, principle, and sportsman who lived in Calumet, Michigan. The Montreal river is fairly wild today, and was even more wild in the early 1960s. Keweenaw county is the largest county in Michigan, and it has the lowest population. The drive from the Montreal River to Calumet would be about a hour more or less. From Jim Maierle, James Maierle’s son:
This was somewhere on the Montreal river up in Keweenaw county where he was stream fishing alone. I believe it was in the spring. He said he was walking along the river when he noticed a small cub. He stopped and looked around and immediately realized he had inadvertently ended up between the cub and the sow. He started backing away from both of them and the sow started advancing on him. He put some distance from them but she wouldn’t stop despite him yelling and waving his arms to warn her off. When he realized she wasn’t backing down he drew the Ruger and waited until it was quite close before he fired. He was a very good shot so I have no doubt he wanted to make sure he could hit where he was aiming. The bear went down as I described. He then took the cub and wrapped it up in his jacket and put it in the trunk of his car. Not sure what to do with it and not wanting to just leave it to die out there, he brought it to a local bar where some of his friends were to show them (it was the 60s..).
1971, Idaho: From Guides tales of Adventure,.22 rimfire page 62 black bear
Walt Earl was a government trapper and hunter who also guided hunters. He had to kill a black bear and cubs in a depredation hunt. The hunter forgot his ammunition for the hunter’s .44 magnum. Walt took refuge on the trunk of a huge pine that had blown down. The sow came after him.
She climbed up and walked straight down the trunk toward me and my pea shooter.
Her head swaying and teeth popping, I held my shot. From behind the flimsy barracade of twigs, I took aim for her throat, and yelled for the dogs to take her. They moved by didn’t answer the challenge.
She stood 20 feet away, with all her attention focused on my throat. I had, in a way, brought a knife to a gunfight.
With eight rounds left in my 10 round clip, I pulled the trigger with my sights on the swaying bruin’s throat.
One. Two. Three. Four. If anything, these rounds just angered her more.
Five. Six. Seven. Eight.
Click…
On the eight shot, something happened. Rocket, that old redbone hound, charged up into the bear, sinking his teeth into the sow’s side. They both went flying. from the log, claws flying and teeth snapping in midair.
As the dogs fought the sow, Earl reloaded. Then, as the sow came at him again, he fired 10 more shots from his Ruger .22 pistol. The dogs distracted the sow once more. The fight moved into a thicket. The sow was found there, dead from two .22 rounds that had reached her vitals. There were 14 .22 caliber holes in her. A bio of Walt Earl is included at the end of the book.
July 8, 1992, Glennallen Alaska .22 black bear
Thirty-three-year-old Darcy Staver and her husband, Army Capt. Michael Staver, were vacationing at a cabin off the Glenn Highway about 160 miles northeast of Anchorage near the community of Glennallen when they were confronted by a black bear in 1992. It broke a window to get into the cabin where they were staying and drove them out.
The couple sought safety on the roof. Michael fired several shots at the bear with a .22-caliber handgun to try to scare it away. It left. When it did, he jumped down from the roof and took off to get help. He took the gun to defend himself, thinking his wife would be safe on the roof. She wasn’t. While he was gone, the bear climbed a spruce tree next to the cabin, got onto the roof and killed Darcy.
When Michael returned with help, she was on the ground dead with the bear trying to eat her. The animal was shot and killed.
Larry Kanuit reports that Michael was very careful *not* to hit the bear for fear of enraging it. P. 251 “Some Bears Kill”
August 1995, Norway, Svalbard Archipelago, .22 rimfire, Failure, Polar Bear, From Spitsbergen: Svalbard, Franz Josef, Jan Mayen, 3rd Brant travel Guide, by Andres Umbreit
Update: Kiepertoyo Hinlopen Strait, August, 1995
Another five people of the crew set out separately with only a .22 pistol and a flare gun. After an hour’s march, the second party were met by a bear, 75m away and openly aggressive. The bear was distracted neither by warning shot nor flare and attacked one of the party. As he did so, he was shot, from a range of only 15m and turned against the man who had fired at him. This man tossed the gun to the first, who shot again. The process was repeated, with first one man being attacked and then the other. By the time the pistol was emptied and a knife drawn, one man was dead and another badly injured. The survivors retreated to the ship.
(snip)
On examination, three shots to the head were discovered, none of them piercing the cranium.
The victim had three years experience with the Origo, with many bear observations, and there were sufficient weapons on board to equip everybody.
Older Reference, Polar Bears: Proceedings of the Twelfth Working Group, same incident.
On 1 September, 1995, two male tourists were attacked by an adult male bear on a remote island in eastern Svalbard. The two tourists defended themselves with a .22 calibre pistol which proved ineffective. One man was killed, the other injured. Police later shot the bear.
24 June 2012, Arizona, Ponderosa Campground, .22 rimfire, black bear, azgfd.net (caliber previously unknown)
The bear had entered the man’s tent and attacked him. His fiance’ and a one-year-old child were also in the tent and were able to escape unharmed and sound the alarm to other campers in the nearby area.
Reports indicate that another camper at a nearby campsite shot at the bear several times with a handgun at close range after the attack. The bear left the area, and it is unknown at this time if or how many times the bear was hit.
.22 caliber mentioned at fox10phoenix story.
25 July 2016, New Mexico, Silver City, .22 Rimfire, black bear.
The startled cubs bawled out for their mother, which came running around the corner. The woman fled into her house, but her dogs slipped out the open door. A fight ensued between the adult bear and the dogs, during which the woman attempted to scare the bear away. The woman’s husband arrived armed with a .22-caliber pistol and fired a single shot in the bear’s direction, Peralta said.
The bear ran off and collapsed about 40 yards away, dead from the gunshot wound, Peralta said. One of the cubs was found near the house and the other was found in a tree.
August 30, 2022 (two cases – two Black Bears), MN .22 Mag Boundary Waters Canoe Area. James Little was interviewed.
On Tuesday, August 30, at about 6:50 p.m., James Little settled into campsite 674 in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA). His youngest child was a few feet away. His youngest cried out, and James grabbed the child and took a couple of steps, uncertain of what had happened.
Then his oldest yelled, “Bear!” and James turned around. The bear was about six feet from him. It had been within 3-4 feet of his back when the child was startled. This was the start of the remarkable incident. In James’ words:
Just finished a trip to Horseshoe that should have been three nights, but turn to one. (Campsite 674) Had a bear walk right into camp and within four feet of my youngest! Nothing would discourage him till I fired a couple of rounds. We packed up and bolted to an open site (campsite 677) a half mile away on the other side of the lake. Weren’t there five minutes and was pulling up the food bag and my wife screamed. There was another bear fifteen feet away heading to our canoe with our kids in it. I had to fire another round before he would be deterred. Left that site and unexpected BWCA.com member Ausable and his crew took my family and me in for the night. (Campsite 672) Early the next morning, we broke came and headed out. My family had had too much. Across from the portage from Caribou to Lizz, (campsite 645) the campers there had their breakfast intruded upon by a bear who would not be deterred till he had taken their food bag.
There are many anecdotal cases of .22 rimfire handguns being used effectively to protect against bears. The above are the cases we have been able to document. If you know of more cases, whether successes or failures, please send the information to AmmoLand. Here is a link to the latest update.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
