Once again, my point of placing this post was not to establish an optimal hand gun bear defense weapon, only to counter the extremely negative attitude towards large bore hand guns as a whole lot better than nothing attitude some folks oppose. Here is an example of a "lucky" park ranger that killed a large grizzly with the lowly .357 as suggested above. Up close and personal, a handgun is a life saver. Is it necessarily what we would call a bear stopper, well dead is dead.
http://www.carnivoraforum.com/index....ay&thread=2724