Crash Jr.
Registered User
Anchorage, AK
Really depends on the mission like you say. For bears that have hard to penetrate spots I'll take the bimetal jacket/steel core rounds.
.223 is very popular among natives for protection against animals. You see lots of Mini-14's and now the occasional AR15 being carried around. Mainly larger hunting rifles though. I like my Mini-14 well enough but I'll take the burlier 7.62x39 over it in Alaska.
To make a counter point though, it isn't about leaving kinetic energy behind. The game is penetration. When you have an animal coming directly towards you, you're trying to penetrate it lengthwise end to end and do as much damage as possible on the way through. Something like a Hornady V-Max bullet that's an expanding bullet will shed it's jacket and fail to penetrate on bears or any tough game. 556/223/545 is not much better as the bullet begins to tumble. Those were all made for use on humans and deer size game where penetration doesn't exceed two feet. For a large black bear you're needing to put that bullet through 5 to 8 foot of animal so penetration is critical. That's why large bore revolvers are normally loaded with hard cast lead slugs. A proper high powered rifle like 300WM (and larger) you can get away with an expanding bullet but for the smaller rounds I lean towards something that will stay in one piece and penetrate an animal completely.
.223 is very popular among natives for protection against animals. You see lots of Mini-14's and now the occasional AR15 being carried around. Mainly larger hunting rifles though. I like my Mini-14 well enough but I'll take the burlier 7.62x39 over it in Alaska.
To make a counter point though, it isn't about leaving kinetic energy behind. The game is penetration. When you have an animal coming directly towards you, you're trying to penetrate it lengthwise end to end and do as much damage as possible on the way through. Something like a Hornady V-Max bullet that's an expanding bullet will shed it's jacket and fail to penetrate on bears or any tough game. 556/223/545 is not much better as the bullet begins to tumble. Those were all made for use on humans and deer size game where penetration doesn't exceed two feet. For a large black bear you're needing to put that bullet through 5 to 8 foot of animal so penetration is critical. That's why large bore revolvers are normally loaded with hard cast lead slugs. A proper high powered rifle like 300WM (and larger) you can get away with an expanding bullet but for the smaller rounds I lean towards something that will stay in one piece and penetrate an animal completely.