the 45 does have recoil, but nothing an adult can't handle. if you are used to a revolver recoil, the auto's feel much different. you must use two hands otherwise you may "limpwrist" the shot. meaning the gun will fail to get the next cartrige from the clip.

9mm will have less recoil, but against a bear I would want more gun. My Kimber .45 is really short, 3 in barrel, and will just about come out of your hands. the trigger is so light that sometimes I "double tap" without wanting to. But you will be happy with the Ruger. Reliable as hell. You could probably never clean it or drag it in the mud and it will still feed flawlessly.

 

A full sized 45 acp with a full steel frame and slide is very pleasant to shoot. It would be more enjoyable to shoot that than a small 9mm like a Beretta Couger or Star Firestar. If you shoot 230grain ball rounds out of the .45 it will produce some feelable recoil, but drop down to 200grain or less bullets and the gun with behaive very nicely. If what your looking for isn't for conceal and carry go with a larger auto and long barrel verses a compact model.

 

Bertman I'm gonna do my best not to call you an idiot here but your pretty close (in my opinion). You dont want a .44 for stopping a bear. Of course it will do the trick but give me just about anything else and Ill have three shots in the bear before you can even get your gun back down. The recoil on a suped up .44 is huge. The answer to all your problems is a 357 magnum. Yup smaller bullet. Yup less recoil. Yup moving alot faster so in return you get more stopping power. I have a .44 so dont get me wrong, I do like them they are fun to shoot. But when Im in the woods you dont want something like that. A 357 magnum would be the gun of choice for those bears.

Most likely when a bear is charging you in the woods you are gonna be crapping your drawers so you most likely aint gonna hit exactly what you are aiming for. The 357 has more stopping power and is alot more user friendly than a .44. Think about it.

 

Another note I have is if you are going for reliable, dont buy anything but a Glock. Glocks are THE MOST ACCURATE "out of the box". The other nice thing about a Glock is they are easy to keep clean and they are always reliable. You can take a Glock put it in a mud puddle, run over it with you truck pull it back out and it will still fire. Thats what you need for a bear gun.

Les Beaur, Kimber, Springfield Armory are all real good guns too. However you pay more for them. The sole difference between a Kimber and Springfield 1911 are the fact that the Kimber was assembled by hand where the Springfield wasnt and costs a couple hundred bucks less. Les Beaur is the same thing but yet in the thousand dollar range usually and you get the name on the side of the gun.

 

Sorry to say RodeHog, but I'm afraid you don't know what you are talking about with those statements you just made.

"Glock the most accurate out of the box" Please................
They are very reliable, but definately not the MOST accurate.

You do NOT want a Glock for a "bear gun"! I'm still cracking up over that one! The Glock does NOT carry a powerfull enough round to knock down any bear reliably.

Les Bauer is the same thing as a Springfield or Kimber??? You are way too funny on this one too![img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]
The Les Bauer slide is hand lapped to the frame as is the barrel fitted to the slide, bushing and frame. Mine will keep a 1 1/2 inch group at 50 yds gauranteed! They even send a test target to verify.

Please don't go giving bad information to others, especially if it might mean causing them bodily harm.

Do a little more research.[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-mad.gif[/img]

 

have to agree with 2fun here rodehog, esspecially for you coming down on bertman. My family hunts bear regularly and would laugh if I showed up with a 357 for a primary weapon. Revolvers have side discharge around the cylinder and you loose alot of muzzle velocity. number of shots mean nothing when they feel like wasps to a bear. If you are looking for strickly a bear pistol, go big or go home. .44 mag is the minimum you will see anyone carry for bear and now with the 480 ruger's and 454 casuul's bigger is always better.

By the way, I have a Kimber 45 and I paid 850 bucks for it. it is the Ultra carry model.

 

Sorry RodeHARD you are the idiot. Who was talking about a suped up .44? Not me. Your three shots to my one still won't stop the bear. Your whole clip probably won't, especially in a 9mm. But hopefully one .44 will. That is the issue here, not how fast you can empty your clip. Your glock may be reliable, but not as reliable as a wheel gun. Your first sentence towards me was uncalled for and shows the CALIBER of person you are. The question .45 or 9mm was posted so I offered my opinion based on my hunting and shooting experience, Sorry it's not the same as yours. You are right the .357 has less recoil and throws less lead but when you are trying to stop something charging you at close range you NEED to go big, end of story. Vinson5 you are right on with the .480 and .454.

 

Well the reason i said 9mm or 45 is cus my primary use is not for bear we only go to bear county once or twice a year and rarly ever see one. But when you do see one it is a black bear and those are pretty small animals compared to grizzlies and brown bear.....when they are on all four legs they are the size of a dog.....but very bulky also....i just wanted an all purpose gun that could be used for bear if you absolutly had to but more or less for coyotes if you scare one up when pheasant hunting and for target shooting......so i found the ruger P90 .45 acp and they are cheap and reliable and look real good.....i know having the 357 is better but i dont really want to spend that kind of money and i dont like how they look either......dont fight about the bear topic anymore....your info has helped make my dicision so far...

 

45 will kick more than a 9mm, but both in my opinion are very manageable.
Both can be very accurate if you are willing to spend the $$ to get a nice one.

Both 45 and 9mm ammo are fairly cheap (9mm a little cheaper than the 45).

If you are not concerned with bear, etc, either one will make a nice round.

In all honest though, the .22 pistol is one of my favorites. I like the Ruger, Browning, and Smith .22's.
They are very accurate, little kick, and inexpensive to shoot.

 

How far up north? I'm not sure about all states but some states don't allow people to carry semi-auto's
when hunting. I'd rather have a 357 or a 44 with a 6" or longer barrel. Then if you ever wanted a pistol for hunting you could just put scope on it. The only protection I'd use a 9mm or 45 for is threats from people. I live in black bear and coyote country and I can't see why you'd be afraid of them. They won't bother you. I'd be more afraid of the other hunters out in the woods. Why don't you just carry some slugs along with your scatter shot for your shotgun? As far as 9mm's go, I kind of like the looks of Kel-Tec's P-11. It's cheap and light. The Kel-Tec is about 14oz. compared to a Ruger P-89 being 32oz.
Anyway, you shoot one pheasant and there won't be a coyote or bear around.