How close would you have to be to a bear to kill it with a shotgun?

Question

I guess you would have to be brave to try it!!

Answer 1

If you use rifled slugs in a smooth bore shotgun with a cylinder or improved cylinder choke a maximum of 100 yards.* If you use a rifled barrel and shoot sabots in it 150 yards.* The vast majority of Big Game is harvested within 100 yards or closer.*

Answer 2

12 guage slugs are effective (and accurate) up 75 to 100 yards.

Bear hunting is usually done from stands or blinds... shots in the 25 yard range are typical on bears and slugs are more than enough.

Bears are killed with bows and arrows from similar distances.

Answer 3

When I did geological field work in southern Alaska we carried Remington 870's with 2 3/4 sabot slug rounds.  The guy who taught us the bear safety course told us that the slugs were good out to about 75 yards and that buckshot was useless as any range - same with pistol rounds - even a 44 mag).  We had a couple incidents where we had bears within 20 yards sizing us up for dinner (A large male black bear).  There was also a female black bear that sent her cub up a tree less than 40 yards from us.  Scary both times.  We never saw a brown bear less than 1/4 mile from us. In northern Alaska we carried .375 H&H rifles.

Answer 4

It depends on if you are using a slug or a buckshot, 30 yards for a good penetrating shot with buckshot, depending on the gun up to 150 yards with a slug!*

Answer 5

depends on your round...and depends how good of a shot you are....if a 20 gauge with size 8 shots could drop a deer at 25 yards....a 12 gauge with size 00 or a slug would drop it at the same distance...and repeat, it depends on how good of a shot you are....

Answer 6

Depends on the type of shells you are using.  You could drop one pretty quick from a good distance if you use a 3" magnum rifled sabot round.

Answer 7

lets just keep it at personal defense range, (dont go bear hunting with a shotgun, keep it for backup)

Answer 8

too close for comfort. and close enough that you'd have to run if you missed haha

Answer 9

I would use a .375 rifle from 200 yds away... no sense in getting close lol. I guess if I had to I would use buckshot at 15-20 ft... scary though.