I don’t hunt, but these guys obviously do — and it’s just interesting to eavesdrop on guys who clearly know something about a subject.

“However, while a .45 is very effective against a person, I would not want to use it on a bear.

A few years ago, a buddy was here on my place hunting whitetail with a .50 black powder. I was roofing my house just before sunset when I heard a shot. He came back to the house and I asked if he hit it. He says, I’m pretty sure I got him, so I came down off the roof, grabbed a flashlight and my Colt 1911.

It was dark and after a while, I saw two eyes glowing from the flashlight and the beast stood up, looking me directly in my eyes. I drew on him and shot. Nothing happened. I shot again and again. The buck just casually walked away. I thought I was just a terrible shot.

Eventually, we found him dead and loaded him into the tractor bucket and brought him to the house.

As we skinned him, there were multiple .45 slugs that fell out, just trapped between the skin and body cavity. They never penetrated into anything vital, just got stuck there.
Later, telling my FIL about it, he said, yep, a .45 won’t do anything to a deer.

If I had to shoot a bear, I would want something with more punch than that, at least a .357.

It is common for bullets to go in one side, almost completely through an animal, and get trapped against the hide on the other side, without enough energy to penetrate the elastic skin to escape. So, which side of the hide were the bullet holes?

Second, it is not uncommon for a bullet to travel between the hide and the body cavity for some distance. It would be interesting to to see the wound channels your .45 bullets traveled.

“The slugs were stuck between the hide and the rib cage. They never exited the chest cavity because they never entered the chest cavity. I didn’t do a full forensic autopsy because I had a sizeable buck to dress, but I don’t remember seeing any wound channels, just .45 slugs kind of lodged in a rib cage.

I will say that I was 30-40 yards away when I shot, so maybe the slugs were petering out?

Of course, a .45 CAN kill a bear. I found several examples of bears being taken with .22 caliber. The 1953 world record grizzly was killed with a single shot .22 long wielded by a 5 foot Indian woman.

I carry a .45 ACP just about everywhere I go and I think it is the best caliber to drop a person, but if I go into bear country, I won’t be protected by a .22 long or a .45 ACP. I will be taking something with a better penetration, like a .357, .44 or more.”

Without knowing where the entrance wounds were, it is impossible to be sure what happened.

A possibility is, because the buck was facing you, the bullets hit to the inside of the shoulder blade, traveled between the shoulder and the rib cage, and came to rest between the skin and the rib cage, behind the shoulder.

I have seen that happen. It does not indicate bullet failure, the bullet penetrated a lot of flesh. Deer are pretty narrow from the front.

A bullet might have hit the meat on the outside of the shoulder blade, and traveled under the skin for some distance as well. Shoot enough, and you see some pretty weird things happen.

At 40 yards, a .45 230 grain ball load has lost 4% of its muzzle velocity and 8% of its energy. It is not a large difference. It has dropped from 830 fps to 796 fps.

It is about the difference between being fired from a 5 inch barrel or a 4 inch barrel.