Only in NJ

An angry black bear that apparently wanted to turn a family's backyard deck into his winter den is fatally shot by police.
The officers had gone to the Kinnelon, NJ home early Tuesday after the homeowner said the bear had killed the family dog, a four-year-old Yorkshire terrier.

The dog was attacked after it was let outside.

Authorities believe the bear, which weighed about 350 pounds, saw the dog as a threat to his safety and his den.

Three police officers then responded and -- after one shot the bear -- it became agitated and ran toward them.

The officers then fired about 20 more shots before the bear was finally killed.

What caliber?  How many shots hit the bear?

I found some [url=http://1010wins.com/topstories/winstopstories_story_358073539.html]more[/url]. 12 guage, 20 guage, and 9mm

Don't know how many hit (or didn't)


A black bear that apparently wanted to turn a family's backyard deck into his winter den was fatally shot by police after it killed the homeowner's dog and then charged at the officers.

Family members found the bear early Tuesday morning, shortly after they let their 4-year-old Yorkshire Terrier go outside. When they heard the dog yelping, they went outside and saw it had been mauled, then noticed the bear near the deck.

Authorities believe the bear, who weighed about 350 pounds, attacked the dog because he saw it as a threat to his safety and his den.

[b]Two Kinnelon police officers -- Jeffrey Pinksaw, armed with a 9-mm handgun, soon arrived, and Sean Patalita, who had a 12-gauge shotgun -- soon arrived at the home and were joined by Bloomingdale police officer Neil Keegstra, who had a 20-gauge shotgun. The bear was then deemed to be aggressive, meaning the officers had the authority to shoot the bear.

Keegstra then fired one shot that struck the bear's left eye, and the animal became agitated and charged at the officers. Keegstra then fired two more shots into the animal, which then ran toward Pinksaw, who fired 14 shots at the bear's neck and chest.[/b]

The bear then slid onto an ice-coated pool cover, but returned to the deck and ran at Patalita, who fired three times. It then again charged at Pinksaw before Keegstra fired three more shots, finally killing the bear.

Sounds like they didn't kill it. Just filled it with so much lead that it was too heavy to stand anymore...

Whew!  21 shots to bring down a bear.  Now what am I supposed to do with a gun with only 10 shots?  Aim?  [lol]  Leave the bear alone!  Call Game and Fish to tranq the bear next time, less paperwork.

Take it that's why alot of outfitters suggest only 41 mag or the larger 44 mag for bear-hunting with your pistola......

Their lucky they didn't suffer the family pet's fate.

Mike

Correct.

People tend to forget that humans will usually feel the pain of wounds and "quit the fight" when they fear for their life.  Big animals will not quit.

A 350 pound bear is not a 140 pound crackhead human.  The only way a bear is going to quit is if you disrupt his system by breaking it down.  It takes a powerful round to do this.

A 9mm is an effective to marginal round against humans.  It is far too light against a 350 pound bear.  You cannot break down a bear's skeleton structure with a 9mm.  The only hope is a brain shot, which apparently this deputy tried to do and failed.  It's not as easy to hit the brain as one might think.

A heavy rifle could have broken the shoulder and stopped the charge.  I bet they were wishing they had one, right in the middle of this fight.

I also bet it was laundry day for the cops.

As Ruark said, "Bring enough gun."

yes..so true..only in jersey.

when that type of stuff happens in OK..the homeowner takes care of business only with a couple of shots from a deer rifle and then calls for the police and possum cops.

on the other hand..i did bear research in college and surely they didnt use handguns on this beast.

an irritated ursine is nothing to plug with a pistol.

longarms only.

Belive it or not during WWII russian pilots would be shot down in wilderness areas sometimes bleeding profusely and with broken legs armed only with a .30 caliber 1895 mosin nagant or tokarev tt-33. Yet they managed to kill bears that became a menace to them with these lame pistol rounds. Yes it's true!

Shit,I usually just use a single arrow from a compound bow...

Obviously, they didn't hit the animal in the vitals. If they had hit the heart or lungs, the bear wouldn't put up much of a fight for very long. A single arrow or well placed bullet will knock the fight out of him pretty quick. I hit a mature bull Elk a couple weeks ago with 1 round from a .300 Win mag and he dropped at the shot. The Nosler partition broke at the partition with half going through the heart and the other half deflecting into the spine. Dropped like a rock and didn't move.

21 shots?

Sounds like they were using Everclear not bullets.

Remember the great 'Gun for use on bear' threads???

Here's another proof in point...

Most likely the shotguns were loaded with buckshot, and the 9mm (in addition to being 9mm) was police-issue JHP. None of these loads are perticularly good choices vs a bear, but it was what the cops had on hand...

Slugs in the shotgun would have resulted in less shots needed... Also, it should be noted that most stories of 9mm vs a bear involve 15+rds expended, and the bear crawling off to die...

Another explanation:

One officer fires a shot at the bear. The bear gets mad, and Mr Shooter, allong with the 3 other cops on scene are faced with a POed bear that looks like it's gonna charge them...

What do they do? Why they just start shooting, and keep shooting untill the bear goes down... So we are not neccicarily speaking of 20 shots REQUIRED TO STOP, but rather TOTAL ROUNDS EXPENDED...

It was stupid to shoot the bear with a 9mm in the first place.

USE THE RADIO and call a gamewarden who has the proper equipment or at least some common sense.
What a dumbass cop...they all should have stayed in their cars till the warden got there.

If he had known how to do a proper brain, or even heart-lung shot, a .355 Caliber 147Gn controlled expansion bullet is plenty enough gun for a 350Lb animal.

My thoughts also – I suspect they wanted to make sure the thing didn’t get back up!!

Probably the only reason that they didn’t shoot it more is that they ran out of ammo!!  [:D]

Yeah, that sounds about right for NJ.

Local Game wardens carry a 9mm & a 12Gauge.  Works fine for mountain lions & coyotes.  They killed the last grizzly Bear in this area in 1912, black bears are rare too.

Bear-Human communications skills - priceless.

Family lets out dog in the morning, misses black bear near deck. D'oh, the observational skills of people...........

Should've waited in their cars. That's good for them, but if it was a weekday morning, what else might be of concern. Oh yeah, kids going to school. Think of those headlines. "Bear mauls children while poilce sit in cars".

I would've double bagged it.

Then again, the weapons seem to be a poor choice for the bear. A 350 lbs bear is more or less full grown, and in good shape. Why would it be lurking by a deck? Could be a problem.

20 gauge shotgun, why would a PD have them? What kind of ammo would they have? Seems to me that would be a weapon they use to put down injured animals. Enough gun to get the job done, not too much for suburbia. I would bet they were using #4 shot or smaller. Against a real bear that's more of a distraction device, than a weapon.

9mm handgun, seems pretty standard. What would be the target area of a bear that is charging you? The head. Which would also be "hiding" most of the rest of the bear. Bear skulls are pretty thick, plus the shape of a skull makes bullets tend to deflect, instead of penetrate.

9mm hollow points are poor penetrators. We have them fail on deer skull, and yes on rare occasions dog skulls. They also seem to be less than univerally effective on people skulls. So a bear skull, would probably be pretty well protected against 9mm hollow points. It might give the bear a good headache or concussion, but kill? I wouldn't bet money on it, let alone my life.

12 Gauge, again pretty standard. I might wonder why it was only fired 3 times. Could have been the officer didn't feel he had a safe shot, or was out of position, when the bear was located, or just wasn't good with the shotgun, or a combination of all of that. I might also wonder what type of rounds were being used. 1 12 ga round will take down a bear. 3 were fired in this incident, I wonder if it was buckshot being used. If so that load may not be very effective, especially if they were "tactical" or other reduced power loads.

21 rounds sounds bad, but they got the bear, and no people got hurt.

A .355 caliber 147grn round is adequate for a 350lb animal...

If it's sitting on a 40mm or longer case, coming out of a 20in+ barrel...

However, out of a 5in pistol barrel, sitting on a 9mm case, said weapon might as well have been a Red Ryder BB gun...

The shotgun would have been quite effective WITH THE RIGHT AMMO (eg SLUGS), but buckshot ~= 9mm, just moving a bit faster due to more powder & a longer barrel...

The patrol rifle concept also comes to mind, but in most cases these are 30-30s or .223s, again, too small...

Where are all the 9mm fans now?I bet my 10mm with 180 grn HP @ 700ft lbs would have done the job in 2 maybe 3 shots.

In NJ LEOs are [b]required[/b]to use slugs when shooting a baer.

[lol] Possum cops, dang thats a good one, and so dang true ...........

One thing people have to realize if that officers usually do not have a say so in the guns they carry.  It's usually someone sitting in an office that has been there for too long.

I know that every agency is different, but I'm issued a Sig P220 in .45 and a Remington 870 12 gauge with 00 buck.  

My policy does not alloy me to carry anything else other than a secondary handgun in .45 JHP.  Per my policy, I can't carry a rifle, slugs, or any other type of ammunition.  You can complain that police should have used this or should have had that.  I'm sure those officers felt the same way.  In a perfect world, I'd be able to carry my favorite 1911 with as many mags as I could fit in my bag, a bandoleer of slugs and buckshot, my AR-15, and my M1.  But unfortunately, that doesn't happen.  

And someone hit it on the head earlier.  Police are called in to do something now.  You dont have the luxury to wait 2-3 hours for a Fish and Game Warden (if we can get ahold of one in my area).  We often have to react given what we have at a given time.  We are often handed a bad set of circumstances and have to do the best with what weve got.

Just my .02 cents.

I think they did what they had to at the time, in order to prevent harm to anyone else.



LMFAO.

OK, I'll bite...

Have you been around black bears much? Uh, I didn't think so. Can anyone remember hearing or seeing a case of human/Blackbear attack?
Probably not.
Sure, the bear killed a dog. I'll bet the dog attacked it as well.
NOW, on the other hand, a gut shot, freaked out Black bear will do some crazy shit.
Best to NOT take the shot with a peashooter and risk haveing a wounded 350lb bear running around.
Sounds like a poor decision from the LEO. Much less risky (for the civilians and cops) to use the right tool when dealing with potentially dangerous game.  Wounded bear = bad news.

Let's see.  What do I carry that would be effective against a bear?

9mm. In my case 124gr +P+. I doubt it would even get past the ribs. I'm not even going to bother trying a headshot.

12 gauge tactical reduced recoil Remington buckshot. A  round that requires second shots on dogs, and which humans have survived center mass shots with.

Shorty AR loaded with 55 gr Remington SP's.
4 20 round magazines.

My game plan would be to hopefully blind him with the shotgun, and fill him with enough ammo that he'll bleed out, while running my ass off to avoid being mauled.

Now, I discreetly carry in my duty bag, (quite against policy I might add) a  5 pack of 12 gauge slugs.  This is more for some unforseen barricade scenario than animals, but that would be my only real option.

Game Warden? Give me a break. If you can even find one,  I'm more heavily armed than they are.

On another note, does anyone remember the police officers that responded to a rampaging circus elephant? I believe it was Florida. Lots of rounds expended that day.

You have to make the best of a lousy situation with the tools in hand.

Look the black bear was no danger to people.

The cops thought it was a stupidly shot it with improper weapons.

Not their fault. They had panicked terrified yuppies -which believe me *might* be more a community threat than the bear- demanding they do something.

CRC

Must of been one of those evil black AW bears that are roaming the streets, time for new legislation.

Were not crazy enough to use a 9mm on a 350lb bear. So there is nothing for us to say.
For people I''' stick to my 9mm and 124gr +P gold dots.

A .40 with a 180gr round might work as well.

One might wonder why a bear was in suburbia. If that was an injured, diseased, starving, or just plain deranged bear, it COULD be a signifigant risk. A bear in bad health will do things a regular bear won't do. I wonder why after it was bothered by a yelping fur ball it stayed in the area.

As far as game wardens............... around here, in deer hunting territory, we have very few DNR Wardens available. It the number of people they have, their work schedules, and the amount of tasks they have to perform. I think that local DNR folks have shotguns.

LEO's are required to use slugs on bears in NJ, I'd like to see that in writing. As well as a list of LEO's that have been prosecuted for shooting bears with something other than slugs. It may be common sense, and hunting rules to use slugs, but I don't think someone with a bear coming at them is gonna NOT SHOOT because they got 2 rounds of buck over the slug.

They had a 20 gauge shotgun..............I'm sure that had slugs, and it's "legal" to hunt bear with a 20 gauge.

Many dept's that issue/authorize shotguns DO NOT allow slugs to be used. N. Hollywood bank robbery ring a bell?  

WDNR issues .40cal glocks and 12ga shotties IIRC. I know the glock thing is right as I talked to a warrden about them one day while he was checking my fishing license. They don't get a choice in sidearms. But I'm not 100% on the 12ga if it's the only other firearm they carry or if they use rifles as well.

And as far as waiting for a game warden like so many people have sugested, IIRC there are 2 or three wardens that cover 5 counties in SE Wisconsin. If other states are similar, that bear could have hauled ass to the left coast by the time GW showed up, they are extremly busy people in this state especially when the deer seasons are running.

My money is on poor shot placement more than anything else. A 12ga slug put in the vitals should have been enough. Taking the first shot with the 9mm was a poor choice IMHO but as has been said you gota do it with the tools you have.

Is it a bonded bullet like the Gold dot? if so it will actually penetrate pretty good. More so than any foster type shotgun slug, which flattens into a donut shape on impact. From shotguns only Brennekke slugs penetrate well.

My gameplan would be have the shotguns loaded with whatever slugs were available. Then shoot it once through both lungs and the heart with the 9mm. it will bleed out in 45-60 secs. if it charges during that time then use the slug guns.

I do remember the circus elephant incident. that animals weigh measured in the TONS and they brought it down with a .30-30.  

Do you think the LEO would of shot it if it were a Polar Bear? I thought they only use clubs on Black Bears.

Just kidding,

Happy Holidays,

Tom