No bear shooting experience but have done alot of hiking in bear country over the years. You really have to piss of a black bear to get them to charge at you. Usually has to do with getting between a sow and her cubs. Most black bears want to avoid contact with people themselves including the ones that frequent high population areas.

That said if you were forced to shoot a bear with what you have (.40 or 00buck) I would aim for the head/face. If it didnt kill em it would likely change their ideas real quick. Just a thought.

With a black bear attack you respond the opposist from how you would with a grizzley. With a black bear you need to fight back with everything you have vs playing dead with a grizzley.

J-

edit: good thing that NJ banned/severly restricted bear hunting some time ago, looks like it is working out great The population has been on a pretty steady increase and they are confirmed in every single county in the state.

This has been some time ago so I don't remeber what kind of bear it was but a MD state trooper I know had one attack and kill one of his goats and scare the piss out of his K-9. He sat up on his roof with a .308 and got it the next night when it came back for another one of the goats.

J,



It has also been my experience that black bear try to avoid contact with people and are usually afraid of dogs.  Go NJ for banning the bear hunt, I guess it will take someone's kid getting mauled for the tree huggers to wake up.
 

We have plenty of black bear here in my area of NC and the only "attacks" I have ever heard of is when someone got too close to cub's with mama around.  They will usually swat you and if you back down they will leave.  We actually had one close to here the other day and the woman and her dog got too close to cubs and mama smacked her and that was the attack.  Most of the time if you leave them alone they will go away since they are usually just looking for food.  As far as killing them slug to the head will usually do the trick.

We had a young female LEO here in my small rural town answering a call for one in our neighborhood. She had her car parked and was walking around with her pistol holstered and a flashlight.

Used to be stationed in the Adirondacks, we were issued rubber buckshot to make the beasties move along, usual load for the situation was 1 rubber buck and 4 slugs.

Beanbag round would probably run him off, but I would want slugs to definitely stop/kill him.

Ain't Law Enforcement fun?

Black bears rarely charge, but with nuisance bears it's more likely.  Shoot for the head if that is the case.  I used to work for WV DNR and trapped a lot of nuisance bears and killed a few also.  Most were relocated, but repeat offenders are DOA.  I alway carried rubber buckshot for my 12 ga as a deterrent and would always shoot bears in the ass with it when i released them to give them that fear of humans.  There are also 12 ga 'shell-crackers' that shoot out for about 50 yards and then explode and sound like a firecracker.  See if you can get ahold of some of that stuff from the fish and game dept.

If you are going to shoot to kill, use slugs and shoot for the heart/lungs.  Bears are tough and buckshot my not kill them quickly and you don't want an injured bear running around a neighborhood.

We only get young small bears in our area.  Basically you just herd them out of town.  We'll also get the occational mountain lion.  Game and Fish will trank them.