I bet it did!!

When I was a teen we raised a few bulls. When they were young we wrestled with them a bit. When they got horns we used to play with them by tugging on them and having tug-of-wars with them. When they got to be about 1000 lbs they wanted to knock us on our butts and would come charging full bore at us and try and take a shot at us, so then I started to punch them in the nose. When they started coming back for seconds of that we ate them and I learned that we really should have turned them into steers a long time before that.

So, if you want to use a firearm on a bear at close range, a 12-gauge with slug, I hear, is your only good choice.

Choosing a handgun would be an error, & BTW concealing it beforehand would not provide any advantage of surprise versus the bear.

Shooting a black bear as safety measure, however, would be highly dubious strategy. If successful, also very messy.

And weighty, at least here if you shoot one in self defense I believe you have to pack the entire critter out and give it to the Fish and Game people.

That is funny--my dad had a thoroughly tame bull that a kid could ride--the only trouble was he had no sense of self. Dad was scratching between his horns one day and the the bull got to sort of nuzzling him and ended up pushing dad backwards into the side of his new pu truck. He pushed hard enough to leave a large impression of Dad's backside in the quarter panel just behind the cab. He never did tell Mom.

-- More on topic--
I was running a loop trail at Cane lake State Park a couple of weeks ago with a friend and we ran up on a sm/medium black bear - we were talking as we ran and the bear saw us about as quick as we saw him. He sorta looked us over (we stopped) and then moseyed on about his business pretty nonchalantly. I doubt that we got closer than about 30 yds of him. We had seen scat a mile or so back up the trail so were sorta looking for one. It was the first one I've ever seen while trailrunning. I was a bit surprised that the 1st was in South Arkansas!

My buddy just had to drag out the old joke that "he wasn't worried cause he only needed to out run me" (he can-easily). Running or fastpacking a firearm big enough to make a difference with even a small blackbear would be a ridiculous encumbrance. IMHO

thanks again for the ongoing posts.

I've done a lot of hiking up here in Alaska, esp on the Kenai Peninsula and a lot of hunting as well on rain soaked Prince William and SE AK islands. I've hike almost every trail on the Kenai Peninsula and have NEVER ran into a bear (Thank You God)but know folks who have and if they're not aggressive or real hungry, you'll never know they were there or just leave you alone. My friends were never charged. Most hunters tho carry heavy duty calibered firearms everywhere when they're hunting even small Sitka Black-tailed deer, just in case. A deer down overheard shot is a bear dinner bell, esp on Kodiak Island. A 338 Win Mag or 375 H&H is common for hunters up here. A lot of the REI crowd/hikers up here don't believe in nor carry firearms, but most of them aren't too pro-gun anyway but do carry the bear/pepper spray. Some of the more dumber ones don't carry any protection and would have the nerve to look surprised if they were mauled or killed. I have no problems with bear spray. Me? I always carried a S&W 44 Mag. I got smarter and now carry a 454 Casull which with a good hard cast hot load will go completely thru a big grizzly at any angle. They have their way and I have mine. I like the Boy Scouts motto, "always be prepared". For just black bears tho, some good bear spray should suffice. I was always told a grizz will normally just maul you but an aggressive black bear will kill you then eat you. Of course, we just had a hiker mauled and eaten up here by a grizzly in Denali Park for the first time, so go figure. If I were worried about black bears where the populations aren't as high as they are up here, I'd just go with the bear spray mainly to save weight. We have had instances up here where bear spray just pissed grizzlies off more but for the most part, it works, esp on black bears. If I were worried and really concerned about it, I'd learn how to use and carry a firearm, the least caliber I'd go with is a 357 Mag. 357's are pretty devastating on a black bear. You can kill a black bear with any deer caliber including the little 243 Winchester, which is a 6mm bullet. 44 Mag is better but a 357 will definitely put the hurt on a bb. Most of the time if something hurts, any normal animal will try and get away, of course if their adrenaline is pumping...your call there.