And how a warning shot is effective.
That time. I've read of other attacks where warning shots and several body shots were ineffective until the bear finally bled out. Here's a couple of stories of two attacks from the same bear in Wyoming.
"I could hear something crashing through the timber," Scott says, "and I smelled elk on the breeze." He slowed down and quietly closed the distance, looking hard into the shadows. "At that time I really thought I was on a big bull, and I had a touch of elk fever." Reaching a thicket of spruce trees, he stopped to listen and peer inside. "And all I saw was this big grizzly head busting out of there, coming straight at me. I fired one shot from the hip, and then I was caught."
Scott's bullet went high, and the 600-pound boar grizzly grabbed him by the face. "I remember hearing my teeth cracking and my jaw breaking," he says, "but I lucked out and got knocked backward between two trees and wedged there, kind of protected." Scott fumbled for his bear spray, but he grabbed the wrong side of it and couldn't get the safety clip off. "I wasn't very familiar with how it worked, and the bear was huffing and jumping up and down on me. It was like being caught in a tornado." The bear swatted his knees, shredding his pants and leaving long gashes in his legs. It bit his side but got mostly a mouthful of jacket. The attack was over as quickly as it had begun.
Aaron Hughes didn't hear his friend being mauled, but he heard a shot followed by the sound of heavy breathing and heavy feet running "flat out" through the woods. This was his first trip to Wyoming's backcountry, and he didn't know what kind of animal made that sound. But he soon found out. "It came into sight, running straight at me," Hughes says. He raised his Savage bolt-action 7mm magnum. When the bear was 12 steps away he picked up a blur of brown hair through the scope and fired. The bear turned and bit himself where the bullet had hit, stood up, and then dropped to all fours and came rushing at him again. "At nine steps I shot again and knocked him down," Hughes says. This time the bear did not move. Hughes went looking for Scott and found him with another member of their party who had wrapped Scott's face in a T-shirt already soaked through with blood.
