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Just looking at that thing encourages me to buy a .50 bmg rifle.
They have been killed with 45-70 400 grain loads at 1300 fps in the past but when your life is on the line bigger caliber is better. 50 BMG is cheaper since you can buy surplus rounds for 1 to 2 dollars each vs. 2 to 3 dollars for a good 45-70 bear round like buffalo bore or $5 a round for a .458 win magnum
factory round.
50 BMG would be the most effective defense round on a grizzly, brown bear, or polar bear.
Heres a company that sells a quality .50 BMG for only 2100 dollars
http://www.serbu.com/
Barrett rifles are great too but the least expensive single shot is
$3600
http://www.barrettrifles.com/
http://www.barrettrifles.com/rifles/rifles_99.htm
If it was me, I would have the .50 BMG for my primary defense and for a back up a remington 870 marine magnum loaded with breneke 3 inch slugs packing about 600 grains of lead at 1500 fps. These slugs are much denser that other brands and penetrate very well.
http://www.brenneke.de/brenneke_engl/web/start.html
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Good idea, except that it weighs around 35 pounds, twice the length of any "normal" rifle, much harder to manoeuvre, those surplus rounds are FMJ and will go right through a bear without any damage and most importantly, they are illegal in Canada...Oh, and I can buy two to four rifles or shotguns for the cost of one .50 BMG and a box of 25 shotgun shells for the cost of 5 shells...don’t get me wrong, I really like the .50 but not as a carry around hunting rifle…
I'd suggest buying a drilling before a .50 maybe a 9.3x74 with 12G, sorry, those are S/S doubles with a single barrel beneath...can be shotgun over rifle or vice versa...
The best bear caliber is the one that, if with all the extra recoil, you can shoot well...if that is a bolt action .300 Win Mag, .358 Win Mag, .325 WSM, .375 H&H Mag, 9.3 X 62 etc. it don't matter...what matters is the ability to place 1 or 2 or 3 shots into the vitals without the fear of when you pull the trigger excessive recoil scares you and causes flinching...
I carry a .425 Westley Richards bolt gun and one of my partners carries a Z-Hat 1895 Winchester lever rifle in .375 Scoville-Hawk and the other a Marlin lever action in .45/70 Gov. and we don’t feel that under-gunned in any way and these guns are never more than inches away from our hands at all times…and I mean AT ALL times...we also have an electrified perimeter fence with shoot up flares mounted to all the fence posts as an additional warning device and if you're going into polar bear country that is one of the most important items to get and maintain...