Gary Reeder
On one of my hunts in Alaska we hunted for big bears
Saturday, November 30, 2024, 13:34

and used a load that good friend Larry Kovach (who was loading all the GNR ammo at the time) loaded up for the hunt. He loaded 450 grain hard cast lead bullets for the 510 GNR. I designed the 510 GNR for bullets in the 350 grain range so these were an experiment to see how the 510 GNR worked on the big bears.

I was on the video camera looking over his shoulder when Larry took a shot at a large bear about 30 feet from him in a stream looking for salmon. The video showed the big bullet hit the bear behind the left front leg, go all the way thru and hit the water on the other side. The bear ran and kept going. We looked for the bear for a full day but never found him or a blood trail.
George Faerber was our guide and he said this had happened a few times before when hunters were using the big heavy lead bullets. He said the big flat nose bullet simply pushed a column of air thru the bear ahead of the bullet, pushing the vitals out of the way, rather than destroying them as it went thru. Later he banned those large heavy lead bullets from his bear hunting camps.
I shot a big bear on that trip that took a lot of killing. Using my 510 GNR revolver one shot was at about 2 feet rolling the bear at my feet. The second shot was at the same range but at the other side of the bear. I had blown 2 big heavy bullets completely thru the bear making an X wound channel. The bear rolled over and came up running. He went off into the alders wounded. That meant I had to go in to finish him off. I wasn't really looking forward to that walk thru the dense alder thicket looking for a wounded bear but the bear saved by bacon by dying before I got to him. I was using that same heavy lead bullet and this time it did the job by putting a hole in both lungs. When we got back to camp I unloaded my 510 GNR and I had 2 blood covered pieces of brass and my scope front lens was covered by blood. Both of these were from the first shot blood spray at the 2 foot point blank shot.

Since then I have danced with 3 other bears but thankfully came out on top.