In August of 2019, a 44-year-old French-Canadian musician/sound engineer was deep in the wilderness in Canada, recording nature sounds for a project he was working on. His hiking companion was a trained biologist who later related the sordid details of what happened next. The victim was apparently zipped up in his tent late at night when a massive brown bear ripped through the nylon fabric, snatched the poor man out of his sleeping bag, dragged him off, and ate him. An aerial search located his remains the following day. There yet remain some places in North America where man is not quite the apex predator.
Exotic Weapons for Bear Defense – NFA Style
I spent three years living in the Alaskan interior back in the 1990s, courtesy of Uncle Sam. As an Army aviator, I had the privilege of flying all over that beautiful place. It was a truly unique experience.
The raw natural beauty of the place strains my capacity to describe. There are upwards of five million lakes in Alaska, most of which do not have names. There were places I could climb to 5,000 feet or so in my helicopter, do a pedal turn, and not see a manmade object to the horizon all the way around. There are just not many places on Planet Earth that can make that claim anymore. A big part of what made that magical place so amazing was the wildlife.
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
Fantastic Fauna
The moose are the size of horses and ubiquitous. Smaller creatures like ptarmigan and ground squirrels have little fear of man out deep in the muskeg. The fishing must be experienced to be believed. And then there were the bears…
The Alaskan brown bear is not quite a grizzly. Folks who study such things claim the Alaskan sort is a different subspecies. I can tell you from personal experience that these things are absolutely enormous.
Fully grown, a fish-fed male Alaskan peninsular brown bear tops out at 1,200 pounds. They can grow to be more than ten feet tall when standing on their hind legs. Biologists estimate there are around 32,000 of them currently in the wild. The population is healthy, and its survival is not threatened at all. In addition to those simply breathtaking dimensions, these animals are also unimaginably tough. They will eat absolutely anything they can catch. That includes people.
Gory Details
What purportedly determines whether you survive the opening moments of a bear attack is the relative size of your head and the animal’s jaws. If his teeth fit around your cranium, the beast will pop your skull like a grape. If not, you might just get scalped. Either way, yours will be a most sucktastic day.
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
Bear attacks are admittedly quite rare—about four per year that require hospitalization statewide. However, if the odds are one in a million and you’re that one, it just didn’t matter what the odds were. I have personally met two survivors of brown bear attacks. Both of them were genuinely fortunate to have survived. For those of us who feel compelled to venture out where the wild things roam, it behooves us to be prepared.
Reasonable Countermeasures
I once saw a sign in Alaska describing the reasonable countermeasures hikers should take to avoid unpleasant bear encounters. It suggested things like fastening bells to your kit to minimize the possibility of surprise chance encounters and carrying bear spray. Then someone else had appended another helpful public service announcement nearby explaining how to differentiate between black bears and brown based upon their scat. Black bear poop should be of a certain size and smell vaguely of berries. By contrast, brown bear crap includes partially-digested bells and reeks of pepper. Personally, I opted for a gun.
The Mission
Literally millions of firearms have been sold in the guise of home, car, or personal defense. Likewise, the topic of bear guns is guaranteed to spark a spirited conversation anyplace two or more gun nerds are gathered. The objective is to expeditiously stop an angry, ravenous 1,200-pound carnivore. For something you need to be able to carry around with you while doing other things like fishing, hiking, and camping, that’s honestly a pretty big ask.
For most folks, the obvious answer is a big-bore wheelgun. However, while the very word “Magnum” conjures up visceral images of power and devastation, any handgun caliber is going to be a suboptimal solution for any defensive encounter. Handguns are designed primarily for portability, not effectiveness. In my case, I started my quest with a little paperwork.
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
Sawn-Off Sexy
Thanks to the archaic dicta in the 1934 National Firearms Act, any shotgun with a barrel shorter than 18 inches has to be specifically catalogued in a national registry of particularly dangerous weapons. Those rules are stupid, but there’s apparently no fixing them. However, after 1 January 2026, the previous $200 transfer tax that was associated with that registration goes away. That’s no small blessing.
Once your BATF Form 1 comes back approved (the details are available online), you can do pretty much anything you want to a traditional scattergun. The weapons I built here, I crafted with hand tools and a little patience. If you can navigate your cell phone contract, you are grossly overqualified to build your own short-barreled shotguns at home.
Mad Max Madness
My first was a cut-down side-by-side 12-bore pistol. I started out with a Russian Baikal coach gun because they were both cheap and ubiquitous at the time. Most any double-barreled shotgun from most any reputable manufacturer would do.
I cut the barrel down with a cutoff wheel on a table saw. If you’re patient, you could accomplish the same end with a hacksaw. I made a test cut or two on the far end of the tubes before marking my spot with masking tape and doing the final chop. A few minutes with a Dremel tool dressed the ends factory perfect. I filled the resulting void between the barrels with JB Weld and set a new front sight bead with a hand tap.
Pistol Grip
The pistol grip was the result of some laborious trial and error to get the mounting geometry just right. The final example was my fifth effort, but it looks cool and feels good. I also sewed myself both a thigh rig and a shoulder holster using seatbelt webbing. That way, I can carry my Mad Max gun comfortably no matter what else I am up to.
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
This post-apocalyptic side-by-side looks awesome. However, it would not be my first choice for a counter-bear gun. If nothing else, it is not unlike some gargantuan Derringer pistol; it only carries two rounds. It is also an absolute butt-whooping to shoot, particularly one-handed. Slide-action guns are better.
Good Enough for Sarah Connor
My host was a Remington 870 Wingmaster. These guns are reliable and everywhere. Start with a surplus sporting or Law Enforcement host, and you can get into the raw material for a couple of hundred bucks. I built two in 12-gauge and another in 20.
Cutting the barrel down is no different from our previous example. Adding a new front sight is easier with a drill press, but you could do it with a hand drill if you’re careful. Swapping out forearms and buttstocks is just plug and play.
Folding Stock
A plain pistol grip is not a bad choice. Shooting this gun will never be fun, but recreation is not the primary mission. I tracked down a 1980s-vintage top-folding Remington Law Enforcement stock because it looked cool. There are lots more comfortable options. Opting for a solid Speedfeed pistol grip sort even gives you space for four extra rounds.
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
Mount up some decent sling swivels, and the resulting hand cannon is indeed easy to carry. My DIY short-barreled shotgun was my constant companion whenever I was outside the immediate environs of Fairbanks. I even had to deploy it once in the face of a real bear threat. Thankfully, the big guy moved on to easier pickings elsewhere.
Feeding the Beast
I opted for some quality sabot slugs to stoke my full-figured bear guns. While still not quite as effective as a .50-caliber machine gun on a tripod, thusly-fed, my chopped-down 12-bore was markedly easier to carry. Everything about life is a compromise.
I was once discussing this issue with an older gentleman in my church in Alaska. He had spent his entire long life in these amazing, rarefied spaces. I suggested I might consider stoking my bear-defense shotgun with four rounds of sabot slugs behind one of those magnesium dragon’s breath incendiary rounds. The logic behind this selection is that perhaps I could frighten an angry bear off without having to get seriously kinetic.
Frontier Wisdom
The old Alaskan pondered my suggestion and then recommended against it. He wisely opined that the only thing worse than being attacked by an angry grizzly bear might be being attacked by an angry grizzly bear on fire. That seemed like some proper frontier wisdom to me.
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
Exotic Weapons for Bear Defense
Statistically speaking, it is diabetes and heart disease that should strike real fear in our hearts, not being eaten by a half-ton furry carnivore. However, I’ve bought guns for dumber reasons. When it comes to selecting the ideal man-portable bear gun, I opted to do a BATF Form 1 and craft myself something exotic. Getting there was indeed half the fun.
WHY OUR ARTICLES/REVIEWS DO NOT HAVE AFFILIATE LINKS
Affiliate links create a financial incentive for writers to promote certain products, which can lead to biased recommendations. This blurs the line between genuine advice and marketing, reducing trust in the content.
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
