BLACK BEAR WITH ROUNDBALL

[Blackfoot]

Have any of you shot a black bear with a roundball?

I got drawn for Minnesota and am going to take my .50 cal flinter on this trip and was wondering what the roundball does on bear as far as enter /exit holes and blood trailing if needed.

Balckfoot

 

[paulvallandigham]

I have not hunted Black Bear with a ML. However, the average Black Bear taken is about 2 1/2 years old, according to data, and will weigh about 200-225 lbs, depending on the year, available food, the weather cycles, etc. While black bear can get much larger, and some over 800 lbs. have been reported taken, the very large bears are rather rare, and any bear that is over 400 lbs. today in the lower 48 is considered quite the trophy. ( I am not taking into considerations any bears that live in National Parks where no hunting is allowed.)

I might want to use a hard alloy round ball for shooting bear, but on these small bear, the ball should easily penetrate to the lungs and heart with the correct shot placement. You do need to study the anatomy of the bear to understand the difference in location of its heart and lung compared to that of deer, for instance.

I am not a blood tracker. Blood is like icing on a cake. I learned to track footprints and sign, and use blood evidence only to confirm that I am tracking the same bear, along with all the other information I develop by examing its footprints, gait, stride, pitch angles, straddle, and trail width. And, then, of course, there are the " accidentals" in each bear's four footprints, representing injuries that are unique to that bear, that leave visible marks in the track to positively identify that bear from all others.

If you want to follow blood trails, then by all means use a conical and punch a huge hole through both sides of the bear. You should get two blood trails to follow if you do this. You won't have to travel very far. Most bear are shot by deer hunters, rather than by hunters who are hunting black bear intentionally, rather than deer.

Since hunting is a wild life management tool, it is in the State's interest to encourage people to shoot the bears when most hunters are in the woods stirring up the populations, and leaving gut piles for the bears to smell and feed on. Reducing the size of the bear population , even when it means that a lot of young bears are killed, meets the objectives of the game managers.

 

[arcticap]

Once you're out in the woods, wouldn't you want to be loaded to take a large bear just in case the opportunity presents itself? It would be a shame if you weren't loaded up with a conical heavy enough to take a big bear.

 

[Blackfoot]

Thanks for the reply.
There is a lot of foliage up here and tracks are pretty hard to see unless it is disturbed by the animal.
I have taken a couple of bears with bow and arrow but none with a muzzleloader (yet) anyway I was just curious about the use of a roundball .490 and 177 grains of pure lead which is the only thing that I have ran through my flinter and I am sure that it will do just fine on the bear but wanted to hear what others have found out when their roundball went in and out of a bear.

Blackfoot

 

[Roy]

I wouldn't have hesitated to shoot a black bear with my .50 if I would have seen one. :grin: One thing you have to remember though its all about shot placement. :v

 

[paulvallandigham]

Foliage gets bruised, torn, turned over, suffers bent stalks, and turns black instead of green when crushed, all of which you can see when you know what you are looking for. The way to learn that is to lay a set of tracks yourself, with your own feet, through the cover, and then circle back to the starting point to find and see the damage done by your own feet. Get down on your hands and knees, and look at the tracks from a few inches off the ground. Put your good eye closest to the ground. Look toward your source of light. You will see light flashing off the flattened surface where you stepped, where the light is bounced in all directions around the track. This is called " shine " by trackers, and all large animals leave " shine " in their tracks. The lower the angle of the sun or light is to the ground, the more shadows will be cast off the wall of a track, and the easier it is to see shine. Even deer leave shine because even their two toes leave flat spots on the ground.

In green foliage, and moss, you will more likely see what we call " disturbance ", than flats, although flats and shine will dance off logs, and rocks that are stepped on. Check out that opening scene in " Last of the Mohigans", when a footprint on a mossey rock is spotted by Hawkeye and Uncas. Understand the natural " nature of things", and then look for something that is NOT RIGHT!, or out of place. This is called " Sign cutting " and its how you find tracks and footprints, or scrapes, or turned over leaves, or bruised tree trunks, or stalks of lesser plants, etc. Always put the ground you are searching between you and your source of light. On cloudy days, this can be tough, but it is still possible to do.

If you are hunting deep forests that produce this kind of ground growth and clutter, getting a long shot at a bear will be almost impossible. A 25 yard shot is considered long. You know that as a successful bow hunter. With a .50 cal. RB, weighing 185 grains( .495": 177 for a .490" ball)
ball, you are going to kill any black bear that close to you. Just load 70-80 grains of FFg or FFFg powder under that ball, and fire away. Aim small, miss small is good advice. At those ranges, its important to pick a small spot on the bear's chest to aim at, and then squeeze the shot off.

 

[Halftail]

14 years ago a 200 pound Black Bear(Dressed weight) was ambling along a game trail right toward my Treestand.I took good sight right where it's neck went onto it's shoulders and Let fly.That Bear fell face first and never "Kicked another Flipper"..490 ball 90 grains of 3f 75 yards.Unfortunatly no pictures.I only ever had 1 other chance at a Large Bear and never got a shot off.That one appear to be twice the size of the one I shot.If I ever get drawn for a Moose tag I'm going after it with my 50.

 

[three otters]

Blackfoot,

Congrats on drawing the Minn. tag. :thumbsup: I've taken two bears with 50 cal.roundballs, both were shot during two separate spring bear hunts in Ontario (back when they had a spring bear hunting season). Both were shot over bait (baiting is legal in Ontario). The first one was a sow (173 lbs. live weight), the second (one year later) was a boar (309 lbs. live weight). Both were shot broadside at approximately 35 yards, experienced complete pass throughs on both animals. Neither animal had to be tracked, the sow did a forward front flip, gnashed her teeth a couple of times and expired. The boar lurched forward, growled and snapped his jaws a few times and then stopped moving forever. :wink: Both animals were double lung hits.

The outfitter, upon field dressing the boar commented on the amount of damage that was seen to the lungs (most of the remaining lung material was a black gelatinous mass) and the surrounding organs. Both were taken with the same T/C Hawken 50 cal. flintlock with patched round balls wrapped in pillow ticking patches and were driven by 75 grains of Goex FF black powder. In my own opinion, and based on my own experiences the 50 cal. patched round ball was more!!!!!!!!!! than sufficient for black bear. Best of luck during your upcoming hunt and don't forget to post pictures.
:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Big K.

 

[hawk]

I've seen them taken with .50,.54and even .45 cals
the shots are always within 45 yards(thick bush cover)and on known trails (bears have a bad habbit of looking for an easy meal and using the same way into camps,dumps,streams,baits...)
remember that taking your time to place the shot is a big part of any hunt ,but with bears some start to rush it a bit.
a 3 to 400 lb black bear @20-40 yards is enough to get anyones heart rate up.

 

[Osprey]

Old Meshach Browning killed 300-400 bears with flintlocks and patched round balls in the late 1700's - early 1800's, I would guess they'll still do the job! :thumbsup:

 

[Blackfoot]

Well, I went and booked an outfitter for this hunt today with an outfitter that I used a couple of times in the mid 90's.

I would normally do the baiting myself and even enjoy doing it but since I am the only one in the group that drew a tag and the price of fuel I figured that I would be ahead of the game money wise to book the hunt. He said that last year they went 27 bears for 32 hunters and have been doing that ratio for a few years now.

So it looks to be a fun bear hunt but I am looking for someone to go along and video tape for me and I will post pictures if I get a bear.

Blackfoot