Several factors could have caused a hunter’s pistol to jam twice during a Wyoming grizzly attack early Thursday, but he still performed well under terrifying pressure, some gun experts said.
“The fact that he was able to clear the pistol and get it firing again in the middle of the attack indicates that he trained frequently with it,” said Ryan Allen, owner of Frontier Arms in Cheyenne.
Archery hunter Landon Clement of Georgia told Cowboy State Daily that his Glock 10 mm pistol jammed twice during a grizzly attack in the remote Upper Green River Basin. Once in the middle of the attack, and then after his final shot to the bear’s head, which killed the grizzly.
The type of ammunition used, fouling or debris in the pistol, or even the way the pistol is gripped can all come into play.
“Most instances of failure to feed in a semiautomatic pistol is because of improper grip,” Art Huckfeldt, who works at Frontier Arms, told Cowboy State Daily.
Ammo Factors
Semiautomatic pistols like the 10 mm Glock Landon Clement said he used to defend himself can be fickle about which ammunition they’ll run well.
Particularly so when it comes to the high-powered ammunition with which people typically load for bear, retired law enforcement officer and military veteran Vince Vanata of Cody told Cowboy State Daily.
The force of firing such rounds can cause the brass cartridge casing to expand more than usual, for example, he said.
That can cause problems with the pistol ejecting the spent casing and/or feeding the next round from the magazine into the firing chamber.
And “jamming” isn’t really the proper term for what likely happened to Clement’s pistol when he was charged and severely bitten in his left thigh by the grizzly, the gun experts said.
“Failure to feed” is a more accurate description, said Vanata, Allen and Huckfeldt.
A jam indicates something having gone wrong or breaking the mechanism of the pistol itself. Glocks have a stellar reputation for their ruggedness and reliability, they said.
Instead, failure to feed means that the ammunition didn’t cycle through the firing, ejection and loading of the next round, for whatever reason.
Get The Lead Out
In addition to cartridge expansion, the firing of some high-powered ammunition can push back the primer in the center rear of the cartridge, Vanata said.
If the primer is sticking out, that can impede the pistol cycling to eject the case and load the next round.
The rifling inside Glocks barrels is also prone to “leading,” or the buildup of lead particles that can lead to fouling, he said.
Rifling refers to the spiral grooves inside a gun’s barrel. Those grooves cause the bullet to spin as it leave’s the muzzle. That spin makes the bullets more stable in flight and more accurate.
For target practice, most shooters use full metal jacket (FMJ) ammunition. That means the lead bullet is fully encased in a copper jacket.
Much of the high-powered bear defense ammunition is loaded with flat-nosed cast lead bullets.
Lead is naturally a soft metal, Vanata said. Cast lead simply means another metal or allow was added to harden up the bullets.
Bears have heavy bones, thick skulls and small brain cavities, he said. So, for a bullet to be effective against a charging bear, it must be hard enough to penetrate a bear’s skull. Or to punch through the heavy shoulder bones, ribs, layers of fat and thick hide protecting the animal’s vital organs.
Keeping any firearm that one plans to bet their life on clean is vital, Vanata said. And if shooters are running a lot of cast lead through a pistol, particularly a Glock, extra care must be taken.
The barrel should be regularly scrubbed out with a copper bore brush and solvents, he said.
Get A Grip
The uninitiated might not realize how important the way one holds a semiautomatic pistol is to the gun’s proper function, the experts said.
A semiautomatic pistol operates on inertia, Allen said.
The explosive ignition of the round in the chamber pushes back the slide (top part of the pistol), ejecting the spent casing the process.
As the slide moves back forward, it catches the next round in the magazine (which is inside the pistol’s grip) and pushes it into the firing chamber.
That inertia depends on giving the pistol something solid to push back against, hence the importance of a proper grip.
Grip is something shooters must practice and experiment with. Grip a pistol too tightly, and it can throw the shots off. Grip it too loosely and it won’t cycle properly.
Huckfeldt said if Clement’s grip went bad during the attack, he can hardly be blamed for it.
“If you’re in the middle of being attacked by a grizzly, there’s going to be a thousand things going through your mind all at once,” he said.
Know Your Gun And Ammo, And Practice
Whether semiautomatic pistols or magnum-caliber revolvers are better for bear defense is a debate that might never be settled.
Revolvers are generally considered to be less prone to failure, but semiautomatics have a higher ammunition capacity.
Vanata favors revolvers in bear country. But regardless of which gun is chosen, the key is to get it out and shoot it regularly, he said.
Handgun owners should try a variety of ammunition to figure out what works, and what doesn’t, in their guns, he added.
Huckfeldt agreed that those who choose to carry a gun for self-defense in the background should plan on spending lots of time at the range, and money an ammunition.
“Train, train, train,” he said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
