A Reddit user said one of the worst animal encounters he ever had came with the kind of gun and ammo combination nobody wants to be relying on when a bear decides it is not afraid of people. In the comment thread, he wrote that he had been forced to shoot at a black bear that “ain’t afraid of humans,” and the only thing he had on him at the time was a .380 loaded with snake shot. He did not try to dress that up as a decent setup for a bear. He flatly said that if the rounds did anything, they probably only stung it.
What made the story so ugly was that it was not one shot and done. According to his comment, it took four rounds before the bear finally took off. That means the animal had to stand there through the first shot, then the second, then the third, still not breaking away, before finally deciding to leave after the fourth. From the way he told it, that was the part that stayed with him most. He was not firing a serious bear gun, and the bear was not giving him the kind of reaction you want when you are already underarmed.
He added one line that made the whole thing feel even worse after the fact: the bear still causes problems. In other words, this was not some clean ending where the animal got the message, disappeared into the timber, and the story became a lesson filed away in the past. He made it sound like this was an ongoing issue with a bear that had already learned not to fear people enough. That is part of why he said he wished he had had a 12 gauge or something similar the first time. In his mind, the encounter taught him the wrong tool can leave you with a bad problem that is still around later.
The thread around it was already full of people arguing about mountain lions, handguns, and what people carry in the bush, so his comment landed with a little extra weight. It was not theoretical. He was not speculating about what he might do if a black bear got weird. He was saying he had already lived through it, and what he had in his hand at the time was a .380 with snake shot. He made the lesson brutally plain in another sentence: “better do it right the first time than have to deal with it later. You don’t always get a second chance.”
That is really the whole story he told. A black bear that was not afraid of humans. A .380 loaded with snake shot. Four rounds fired before the animal finally left. And afterward, the hunter still thinking about how badly it could have gone if the bear had chosen to come in instead of stand there. He sounded grateful the bear did not charge, but he also sounded like somebody who had no illusions about how thin the margin was. With a .380 and snake shot, there is not much room for comfort once a black bear decides it is staying put.
What do you think — if the only thing you had in your hand was a .380 loaded with snake shot and a black bear was already refusing to back off, would you trust four rounds to buy you time, or feel like you were already behind the curve?
Original Reddit post: To the guy that was looking for it. That’s a crazy ass situation to be in.
