Bears and the unchambered carry debate

[Glenn E. Meyer]

This might go into Hunting or Semi handguns but I think it speaks to the unchambered carry debate and the problem of using such a gun under stress.

The attack is not from a person but a bear.

https://www.wyofile.com/10mm-glock-f...rizzly-attack/

[shurshot]

Why I prefer a revolver! What a story.

[FrankenMauser]

An interesting addition to the narrative.
It is nice to see that the hunter is not being painted as a lily-livered sissy. Many previous articles on the incident portrayed the hunter as doing nothing more than throwing the pistol toward the guide and running away.


I can tell you quite plainly that I carry with a round in the chamber. If it isn't ready to go bang, there isn't much point in having it.
I believe that to be true in many potential encounters. But past experience with bears reaffirms that belief, for predators in particular.

[briandg]

Stupid. Walked up on a kill that had stunk up the area for almost a day, dropped the weapons a few feet away, carry with an empty chamber (now we know that a charging bear can get to you before you pick up the gun that you set aside). a gun without a round chambered is useless until you take both hands and rack the slide, and pray to god that the grizzly who is looking at you doesn't get offended by the noise or movement.

The guy is dead and I grieve for him and his loved ones.

He ignored so many normal precautions. He was in risky country, then went into even riskier country,then walked into a literal death trap without even considering the consequences. Even cops have reservations about walking into hostile areas, but there are so many people who pay no heed to what they do or where they go.

The thing that everyone, even the guy who's hunting quail must remember is that anything can happen at any time. A person who only carries when he's going drinking in a seedy bar neglects the other 99% of his life. seat belts only on the highway won't help any. laying a non-functional gun on the ground and rolling around in guts and gore in grizzly country is like walking through a combat zone.

I have one very important thing to add to whatever dialogue follows.

everyone in the group should be familiar with the other guy's equipment. Know the safeties, know how to operate the phones, etc. If your phone is busted and your buddy is down after a car wreck outside of town, you had better know the password!

[Don Fischer]

Well, that was interesting. Couple thing's I wonder about. Why leave the defense gun off at the packs when trying to dress an elk killed the day before in grizzly country? Hunting in grizzly country and carrying a gun for defense, why separate yourself from the gun at all? Sad that the guy was killed but the bear was just being a bear. Bear is not the bad guy here. The guide had a client into that situation and the guide failed! I've never had a run in with a grizzly and spent some time in grizzly country in Montana and Alaska. I've never carried a side arm for protection. If I felt the need for protection, I'd have a rifle very close at hand, over by the packs just don't cut it. Kind of hard to place either you or your client's life in that situation in that country by walking away from the last line of defense while working on a bloody animal that was laying out over night!

[Don Fischer]

Originally Posted by FrankenMauser

An interesting addition to the narrative.
It is nice to see that the hunter is not being painted as a lily-livered sissy. Many previous articles on the incident portrayed the hunter as doing nothing more than throwing the pistol toward the guide and running away.


I can tell you quite plainly that I carry with a round in the chamber. If it isn't ready to go bang, there isn't much point in having it.
I believe that to be true in many potential encounters. But past experience with bears reaffirms that belief, for predators in particular.

Isn't ready to shoot and within arms reach!

[Double Naught Spy]

I don't know that it speaks as much to the unchambered carry debate as much as it does to the "not familiar with how your partner's gun works" debate.

So this sort of then begs the question as to whether or not you (or in this case, Upton) should have a gun with you that should be able to be utilized in an emergency by a person not familiar with the gun in the condition it is being carried.

First, the gun in question was not even being carried any longer. It has been left a short distance away by the guide, Upton, who had been carrying it previously.

So, it was not Chubon's gun. He had to go retrieve it.

Chubbon was not familiar with its condition (empty chamber) and apparently not with its operation or what to do if a gun does not fire. Apparently, he never attempted to tap-rack to clear the issue.

Now, had Upton still been carrying his Glock and attempted to draw and fire it, only then to realize it had an empty chamber or had been attacked while charging the gun, then the story would speak directly to the unchambered round in a carry pistol debate.

[Don Fischer]

Originally Posted by briandg

Stupid. Walked up on a kill that had stunk up the area for almost a day, dropped the weapons a few feet away, carry with an empty chamber (now we know that a charging bear can get to you before you pick up the gun that you set aside). a gun without a round chambered is useless until you take both hands and rack the slide, and pray to god that the grizzly who is looking at you doesn't get offended by the noise or movement.

The guy is dead and I grieve for him and his loved ones.

He ignored so many normal precautions. He was in risky country, then went into even riskier country,then walked into a literal death trap without even considering the consequences. Even cops have reservations about walking into hostile areas, but there are so many people who pay no heed to what they do or where they go.

The thing that everyone, even the guy who's hunting quail must remember is that anything can happen at any time. A person who only carries when he's going drinking in a seedy bar neglects the other 99% of his life. seat belts only on the highway won't help any. laying a non-functional gun on the ground and rolling around in guts and gore in grizzly country is like walking through a combat zone.

I have one very important thing to add to whatever dialogue follows.

everyone in the group should be familiar with the other guy's equipment. Know the safeties, know how to operate the phones, etc. If your phone is busted and your buddy is down after a car wreck outside of town, you had better know the password!

Great post!

[Lohman446]

I'm a fan of a the 10MM. Oddly enough I am also somewhat of a fan that we use drastically over powered rifles when hunting. Its one of those "dream" hunts I likely will never do to hunt Elk with a single shot Ruger No 1. In my mind its with a .257 Roberts but I have a suspicious this "grows up" to something more substantial by need.

That aside I'm not certain that 10MM actually changes this story that much. Better than nothing? Yeh - I've advocated for the 10MM as the best balance of handgun you are going to find.

But if I am in Grizzly country I want my guides "grizzly emergency gun" to be a rifle starting with at least a couple 3's if not a 4 or a shotgun.

[mete]

Hokey pucks ,that's all you need !
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-shooters.html
Lot's of luck .
I know they had sling shots against the enemy in ancient -r Roman times but the typical grizzly is stronger , faster .

[spacemanspiff]

I am not a hunter, nor do I venture out into the areas where bears roam. Sure, an occasional black or brown bear wanders thru Anchorage, but unless you are invading a kill site where they are feeding, or get between them and their cubs, they usually run away.

With that said, if I ever do find myself on a hunt in bear country, I think it would be prudent for one person with me to be on watch with a 12 guage in their hands. Let the others take care of the carcass.

Oh yeah, and I'll keep my shirt on.

[JERRYS.]

there is no debate. there are those that carry with a round in the chamber, and those that wished they did.

[jmr40]

This has been out there for a while and been HOTLY debated on some other forums. There is no simple answer and there are 2 different debates. Hot or cold chambers in rifles, and hot or cold chambers in handguns.

Where I live the custom is to carry rifles and shotguns with a chambered round. But in many places the custom is to keep the chamber unloaded until game is spotted and a shot is imminent. If you're on a guided hunt in many places the guide will refuse to hunt with you if you insist on a loaded chamber.

I've been a hunter safety instructor since 1986 and the IHEA does not suggest cold chambers as a rule. They do teach that the chamber should be cold if crossing rugged terrain, crossing ditches, fences, or entering a stand or vehicle. In many places the terrain is rugged enough to justify cold chambers more often than not. And I understand a guides reluctance to walk around with an unknown, untested hunter following him with a hot chamber.

I've been on one guided hunt and the guide had no problem with hot chambers. But this was in the desert in New Mexico. Not on a steep, snow covered rocky slope at 10,000' up in the Rockies. I've done that too on a DIY elk hunt and my chamber was cold in several places where the footing was questionable.

Handguns are different. If the gun is in a secure holster I believe in hot chambers. But there are times where guns are stored, or carried with no holster and I don't necessarily like them chambered. Especially guns with no traditional external safety like a Glock.

In this case the guide made several mistakes that cost him his life. I have no issue with his choice in handguns. That would be, in fact is the same choice I've made. But in this case the gun should have been with him and a round should have been chambered. Odds are very, very good he'd be alive today if he had.

But if I am in Grizzly country I want my guides "grizzly emergency gun" to be a rifle starting with at least a couple 3's if not a 4 or a shotgun.

I might be mistaken, but believe they were archery hunting and the guides handgun did start with a 4.

I think this is relevant and needs to be shared. ANY handgun is far more effective than most of us have been taught. There are 37 instances profiled here where people used handguns to defend themselves from both black and grizzly bear. All but one was successful and that was because the person was thought to have missed with all shots. The 44 magnum was the most commonly used cartridge, but the 9mm, 40 S&W, 10mm, and 45 ACP combined for more bear stops than 44.

https://www.ammoland.com/2018/02/def...#axzz5Ucf4zGTb

[Mainah]

Briandg nailed it. Three men on a carcass that spent time in bear territory. If one of them stood guard with a rifle while the others processed the elk this may very well have been a different outcome.

[Dano4734]

In Alaska if any of us bag game one is standing guard with a guide gun

[Rachen]

Why I prefer a revolver! What a story.

THIS...And full powered ammunition with heavy flat-point lead bullets whenever I am heading into known bear/predator country. Also I have several handheld marine-grade white flares with 10-20 minute burn times. They can be used as perimeter defense, illumination and emergency firestarters. The blinding white light dazzles and stuns would be predators very effectively and lights em' up for excellent target acquisition as well if I need to resort to shooting.

[briandg]

Three men on a carcass that spent time in bear territory. If one of them stood guard with a rifle while the others processed the elk this may very well have been a different outcome.

To take that a little further in depth, there just wasn't a particularly good outcome likely since they were within a bear's range.

If they had gotten there a little bit later, they would have happened upon it while it was feeding and it might have attacked to protect the kill. If they had found it a little earlier and finished processing, they may have been followed back to camp by the bears that caught the scent of the fresh meat (assuming that the bear didn't smell and follow the scent to the gut pile). Happening on the darned thing at any point in the stalk and hunt was a dangerous possibility.

No matter how it played out it seems that they wound up in a quarter mile range or so of a temperamental grizzly and failed to take even simple precautions. The guide was too comfortable in his hunting range.

In my mind, the biggest problem, and the problem that I believe set it all in motion, is that they made a kill and left it to ripen. A cadaver dog can spot the smell of dead meat within a few hours, a grizzly could have smelled the carrion from over a mile, as I understand, and having caught a whiff of it, eventually tracked it to the source. If there were more bears in these hunting territories we'd be seeing more hunting deaths.

Do bear country hunters have a legal right to carry a gun while bow hunting or hunting with other non firearm weapons? I'm just not at all confident of my own ability to stop a grizzly charge with a bow.

[USNRet93]

Chubon, whom the bear also mauled, grabbed Uptain’s Glock but couldn’t get it to fire, Hovinga said.
A related investigation by the Teton County Sheriff’s office resolved a key question; whether Uptain’s Glock was in good working order.
Game and Fish turned the weapon over to the department, which gave it to its firearms expert, Lieutenant Matt Carr told WyoFile. “It was a fully functional Glock,” said Carr, the sheriff-elect of Teton County.

NO reason to 'carry' a Glock unchambered, if if it isn't on your person. It doesn't just 'go off', even if dropped. PLUS, in the 'wild', why not carry? Lotsa of really comfy holsters..

laying a non-functional gun on the ground and rolling around in guts and gore in grizzly country is like walking through a combat zone.

Yup

everyone in the group should be familiar with the other guy's equipment.

Yup, again, before I got my CCW, when I 'manny-ied' my 2 grand kids, and before I got my first handgun, I had my son show me how to operate his G-17 that was up in is safe..along with the combo..

[MarkCO]

I don't know that it speaks as much to the unchambered carry debate as much as it does to the "not familiar with how your partner's gun works" debate.

Agree. The guide removed the shoulder holster to gut the Elk, but there is no evidence that it was unloaded at that time. We know the client tried to use the pistol and could not figure it out and the magazine was also out. Humans try to fill in the gaps, but the evidence only supports that there was no round in the chamber later.

[Wyosmith]

As I say to all my students.
They are handguns, not "hands-guns"
If you need 2 hands to make it work it's either a stupid design or you are uneducated in how to carry and use it.

But when logic and emotions come into opposition with each other, the human being will usually take the emotional side. Real education is the key. When someone has education based in TRUTH their emotions are guided by those truths. When brainwashed by lies their emotions follow the lies. It goes for politics, personal relationships and even hardware. (Black rifles are "evil". Small handguns are "Saturday Night Specials" and are only for murder. AKs are "Commie Guns" and so on)

Gun folks often think of themselves as the exception to this rule, but that is not so.
That is why (and how) fads come and go in the marketing world of guns.

So when someone thinks a gun is "unsafe" with a loaded chamber it's because that is what their emotions lead them to believe and logic/facts can't make a dent. Truth in education does NOT reverse this. What it does it to let the emotions fall in line with truth instead of the lies or mistakes.

[briandg]

The guide removed the shoulder holster to gut the Elk, but there is no evidence that it was unloaded at that time.

Mark, you're only trying to be reasonable, but given the fact that the gun was found in that condition (probably) where the hunter dropped it, and the people who recovered it (police officers of the National Park, I assume) would have brought it in as found, it's probably just as it looks. Sure, it's an assumption because we can't prove anything, just rely on testimony after the fact that it wasn't tampered with after recovery.


But, in any event, it's either real, or a slightly modified scenario that is being discussed reasonably, just like any of the other created scenarios that are discussed. Any hypothetical guide who let himself be caught unarmed and unawares is just as guilty of stupidity, despite his imagined status.

[briandg]

But when logic and emotions come into opposition with each other, the human being will usually take the emotional side. Real education is the key. When someone has education based in TRUTH their emotions are guided by those truths.

That is quite sage. Myself, I am driven by logic to the point that people think that I'm nuts. Even my wife complains if I remind her that we should go shopping in a specific order of stops. Home depot first, walmart next, then ATM, and groceries. A nice little loop with only one left turn in the heavy traffic. The milk won't get cold on the way home.

She really likes it when she can remind me that one of the places is about to close, and my carefully thought out map is WRONG! Even pure logic can fail you in a situation where proper information is withheld or not put into the loop.

The hunter education classes demand that you unload your weapon and set it down when you confront an obstacle. Cool, right? the dog won't knock it over and blow your ankles off.

Did that apply when the guy set an unloaded weapon on the ground because he didn't want it to get dirty or shoot him in the back while he wasn't looking? Oh, holy green poodle poop, no! Nothing could possibly support that thought based on logic, and my lord, I can't think of any way that even the greenest of greenhorns would think that a defensive weapon should be where it can't be used to defend oneself. Only a genuine snowflake would have done it, or insisted that the guide do it.

[Lohman446]

The hunter education classes demand that you unload your weapon and set it down when you confront an obstacle. Cool, right? the dog won't knock it over and blow your ankles off.

I get this was not what you were arguing for so to further the point. The purpose of this pistol was far different than the purpose of a hunting long gun

[briandg]

Not really meaning to suggest that he should have dragged his piece out of his shoulder holster, shucked out the round and dropped it on the ground while unloading his lunch bag. If it was a shotgun and quail hunter climbing over barbed wire, well, that's common sense, and as he said, mistaken adherence to good, yet inappropriate advice and allowing our less than practical side rule our decisions is why we make a lot of the mistakes we make.

You know, I once took a shortcut through arkansas to save thirty miles, and had to drive through country that made beirut look like a holiday camp. Logic dictated that taking a shorter route would have worked out just fine. I should have never discounted the fact that I was going through the deep south, land of sloughs, skeeters, and packs of dogs that were out running deer at night. Oh, yes, want to make your wife barf? run an entire pack of dogs over at 1 am.

[bamaranger]

Just to clarify, it's not "the gun", it's the mode of carry, ie, .......using a gun, carried in such a manner, under stress. On top of that, the issue of NOT CARRIED, is bigger if not greater, than the "half loaded" carry mode. Another darn shame, loss of a good man, in a wild circumstances, likely never fully understood. All we can do now is learn from the incident.

I've never been a proponent of "half loaded", nor a gun in the glove box, or between the seats console, in the trunk, etc. If you need a gun, you may very well need it RIGHT NOW.

I took a call from an elderly gent of my acquaintance, who stated his pocket auto .380 would not cycle, he carries it w/ an empty chamber. Pistol works fine, turns out, now at 85yrs of age, , he lacks the hand strength and dexterity to manipulate the slide.

I've encountered other folks who carried in odd manner: empty chamber on an auto, hammer down on an empty chamber in a modern DA revolver, and one fellow who carried with a spent case as next round up in a DA revolver, the argument being to protect himself in the odds of a gun grab. None of these folks would take any council on their practices. All of them were astute enough you'd think they'd know better.