What do you guys recommend keeping in the plane as a survival weapon? I've never hunted bear or any other kind of animal. I have an M1 Garand (.30-06) and I've been wanting to purchase a 12ga shotgun.


Whats the best survival gun to carry into a bear/deer/elk infested forest?

mr. willie you just opened a can o worms there the last servival gun forum went on for ever. but what the hell its my third favorite topic. I carry a winchester defender but if it wernt for canadas opresive gun laws id have a 460XVR.

Well, to reduce the arguments..

What is going to easily, or semi easily, or... at some point.. going to stop a charging bear? Will 2 loads of 00 buckshot do it? or is it gonna take a rifle to make em quit?

Willie,
Keeping in mind that bears rarely attack people, and that (especially in a Cessna 140) the weight of a firearm is likely to be more dangerous than going without, here's what I know.

Accuracy is everything. A .50 BMG round won't stop even a small bear if you don't hit a vital area. THE important factor in a defensive round is whether you can hit what you're shooting at, under stress, every time. The one and ONLY recipe for accuracy is practice, so while a winchester .458 magnum may be the ultimate bear slayer, it's a poor choice unless you have the money and physical stamina to get REALLY good with it. That means hundreds of rounds every year in a combat setting, not twenty rounds at the range from a rest, followed up by another five every other year to make sure the sights haven't changed.

A 12 gauge slug is a fantastic round for bear defense...I'm less thrilled (wouldn't trust it against a brown bear) about buckshot, as the penetration is not nearly as good, but some like it.

I think that a 12 gauge shotgun is the ultimate survival firearm for a lot of reasons...chiefly among them being that the firearms are easy to shoot, cheap to practice with, inexpensive to acquire, and incredibly versatile.

The same gun which will stop a bear will, with equal efficiency, put a grouse, hare, or porcupine over the campfire coals. Buckshot will (I'm told) harvest salmon with ruthless efficiency so long as someone is downstream to scoop up the corpse. In a survival situation there isn't another weapon that even comes in a close second to being able to feed and protect a person. About the only disadvantage is that the shells are fairly heavy and bulky.

One of the all time best guns I own is a Stevens side-by-side 12 gauge that I bought at a pawn shop. While I was there I bought a hack saw and a miter box. I cut the barrels down to 18 1/4 inches and have been using the gun for the past twenty years. Cutting the barrels down did very little to the pattern...it'll still put all 12 pellets of 00 buck in a human target at 30 yards...24 pellets if you want to pull both triggers at once. With slugs I can hit a gallon milk jug at 20 yards with monotonous regularity.

Two rounds isn't the ultimate in bear protection, but with two triggers I can load one barrel with a #8 dove load and hunt grouse in thick alders, knowing that the second barrel is loaded with a 1 1/4 oz slug. In twenty years I've never mistaken one trigger for another. Also, a double barrel gun has a very short action, making it a good three to four inches shorter than a pump gun.

I also have a Remington 870, which is probably the most tested, most trusted, most reliable pump shotgun ever made. It's also about as romantic as a Cessna 172, but utility has it's own appeal.

About the only thing you really need to stay away from are the pistol grip shotguns...they look cool but are useless when you try to hit anything with them.

What any 12 gauge shotgun will do that no other weapon will is both protect you and feed you, providing you learn how to use it. Obviously you also need to do some research and learn what rounds will do what...try shooting a rabbit with a slug or defend yourself agains a bear with a low brass #8 and the results will be comical/tragic.

Bear in mind (pun intended) that there is no shortage of bad advice on the web. I've seen firearm advice on this forum which was so off base I was unable to write a civil reply. If you choose to protect your life based on the suggestions of some unknown person in cyberland, well, good luck. Any fool can carry a gun, but knowing how to use one takes thought, time, effort, money and dedication. Unless you're a shooting enthusiast and find joy in the process, the chances of actually having to put that skill to work are so slim that it's hard to find a justification.

Hammer,

Thanks for the advice. I have shot plenty of rifles,shotguns, pistols, bows and crossbows.. blah blah.. But honestly I have never hunted. My parents were never too enthusiastic about it in any of it's forms. I wish I had learned the skills.

I only weigh 125, so weight isn't a real big issue in my 140. I have been thinking of adding a double barrel to my collection. I have always liked them and I like their reliability due to simplicity. I just didn't know if that was something that would be useless in a big-pissed-off animal situation.

Oh.. and I can't stand pistol grip much of anything. I feel much more comfortable with a conventional rifle grip.

I understand what your saying about pistol grips but consider this shotguns with full stocks are very easy to break. In a crash for example, so I keep the pistol grip on mine for that reason, it also fits in a small plane better. Ever try to get a shotgun with a 36in barel in the 140? that being said I bought boxes of slugs and practised shooting cinder blocks until i was confident of my and the guns ability. there are plenty of folding stocks that solve bolth problems.

Good morning all,
My vote is for a 12 Ga pump for all the above reasons. Just remember to stop a big animal you need to reach the vitial organs= slug's. They recoil hard so shoot some for practice. Pump guns W/ extended tube (8 shot) you can fill it with a mix of rounds. A few slugs, more bird shot. Chance's are you 'll use them for food and never need the slugs. vac. seal a hand full of protien bars and throw them in and your hunting skills will not be as importain. Pistols are another issue, unless you can shoot one real well don't bother, as in a stress situtation one's accuracy tends to fall off a bit, ie: police officers firing 13 rounds at ten feet and missing. for that matter bad guys missing w/a shotgun under 10 feet!
Good luck anyway you choose, all above comments (not mine) were excellent advice.

by the way, I found a great survival vest and ordered it for christmas. It's a Swat entry vest with lots of pockets and a cross draw holster on it. Should be able to put all my survival gear and portable radio in it, along with scaring the shit out of any line guys at fuel stops. Made by blackhawk industries..

First of all, Great Thread!!

I like where it wandered, and really liked all of the First Hand information. Some of the responses were incredibly informative, nice work, thank you all.

My 2cents:
The common 12 guage pump is the best defense gun for the buck, and as previously stated you can get good with it on the cheap. (mmm bloody shoulders)

A gun is like an airplane, be careful about pre-conceived notions, in the right hands you will be surprised what can be done. (range, accuracy, etc).

Watch out for old guys they are better shots, cooler under pressure , and less likely to put up with hijinks.

Restrictive gun laws: Your pilot certificate should double as your concealed carry/ full auto/hand gun/license, Nation wide.
(after a proper "check ride "of course)

Looters, and grave robbers: I think you can guess what I would suggest for these folks.

way back when I was with SDPD on SWAT we used the 870 with a pistol grip as an entry weapon. We had DBl 00 buck magnum shells and when fired a four foot flame came out of the 18 inch barrel. I still have a Rem. 870 with 18 inch barrel and wouldn't hesitate to bring it along to the back country. Mine has plastic stock which might survive a crash better. Now if I can figure how to attach it to my new Survival vest along with the .40 Cal Sig...... and fly the plane at the same time.

Scaring line guys aint cool.... I'm one of them

good to hear that there is some people who carry guns for bear medicine and not that lame pepper spray stuff

When the police train with pepper spray they are tought that it is used to buy you a few seconds with a human oponent wich means if a bear wants to eat you pepper spray will extend your life about 1.5seconds. Less if its a mexican bear that likes spicy food.

I actually think bear spray is a better solution than a firearm for the majority of people. It's inexpensive, light weight, easy to deploy, and works a fair amount of the time. You can carry it in a National Park, which in the lower 48 is about the only place you're going to run into a grizzly. It also has a very limited range, which means it's much less likely to be deployed against a bear which is making a bluff charge. Putting a bullet in a bear that was going to stop its charge thirty feet short of you is a great way to turn a "no shit there I was!" story into a "so did you hear how that jackass died?" story.

The ability to hit the vital area of a bear during a charge is so far beyond most peoples' skill level that they would be better off rolling up and playing dead rather than trying to defend themselves with a firearm. Bear spray, by comparison, is incredibly simple to deploy.

Also, guns always have and always will make people stupid. Aside from wearing a baseball cap sideways, I know of no better way to knock forty points off someone's IQ than by handing them a firearm. With enough training people can work through the effect, but not always. And very few people actually seek out quality training.

Most people who get into trouble with bears invited it. They blundered too close to a bear which they should have been able to detect if they were paying attention, or they got sloppy with their food, or they chose to camp somewhere that it was obvious someone else had been sloppy with food. These people don't need more firepower, they need to pull their heads out of the comfy confines of their rectums and take a look around. At the end of the day I don't think bears should have to pay the price for people's complete lack of common sense.

All that said I do carry a firearm while traveling in bear country, but I know how to use it and I also understand that it doesn't alter my primary responsibility, which is to go about my business without annoying the resident bears. To date my binoculars have saved me from several bear encounters, while the only real use I've gotten out of my shotgun is when I removed the barrel and used it as an impromptu ice ax while crossing some steep snow fields.

Hammer wrote:I actually think bear spray is a better solution than a firearm for the majority of people. ...etc.

Good points, Hammer, I'm with you. I carry the spray all the time now but haven't put the shotgun in the plane for years, with a few exceptions.

But using your barrel as an ice ax! That's a new one!

Rocky