{"id":172134,"date":"2025-07-30T07:00:27","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T11:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=172134"},"modified":"2025-07-27T14:13:53","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T18:13:53","slug":"a-different-kind-of-feel-good-story-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=172134","title":{"rendered":"A different kind of feel-good story"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Skin ‘im, Pilgrim!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

July 19th a pair of former Green Berets were scouting locations in Alaska to bow-hunt moose in September when they had an interesting experience.<\/p>\n

Brett TerBeek and his buddy Andy (no surname given) were pushing through the brush when they caught a whiff of something dead. Not all that unusual when you’re in the woods, but a good reason to be alert as you don’t know what is causing it, right? About a hundred yards further, the smell came back\u00a0 – strongly – and they both drew their pistols. Glock G20s in 10mm – call it one out of two, the caliber started with 4 but plastic guns…well, in this case they worked out OK.<\/p>\n

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Andy pivoted left, looking past Brett, and said, \u201cBear, right there!\u201d<\/p>\n

Brett told me that as Andy said that, he turned and saw the huge grizzly\u2019s head rise from the brush, only 10 yards away. The boar locked onto them and laid its ears back as it sidestepped the moose carcass he had been on. He came lunging straight through the brush toward both men.<\/p>\n

\u201cAndy fired the first shot,\u201d says Brett, \u201cand I remember seeing a perfect sight picture in the center of the bear\u2019s mass as I squeezed the trigger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Brett and Andy served as Green Berets for a decade before going to PA school together in the Army, and Brett credits his years of service using the 9mm Glock G19 for being able to fire rapid, controlled shots with the larger-but-similar 10mm Glock G20.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The bear was a good-sized griz – the skull length plus width approximated 25″, which makes it damned near a world-class size per the author. The hide squared at 9 feet, which is plenty big enough for my taste. (Heck, from ten yards away I guarantee I wouldn’t taste good, if yaknowwhudImean, Verne… at least the lower end of me wouldn’t.)<\/p>\n

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\u201cHe was crashing through the brush directly at us and, afterward, branches were all broken and plowed over and we found at least two that our bullets struck. When he got to about five yards, he turned to his right to step into a more clear path towards us and we kept shooting. As he moved into that open lane, I knew I had at least one or two of the fifteen rounds left \u2014 I hadn\u2019t been counting \u2014 and I needed to save those until he got right on top of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortunately for the pair, the bear collapsed there, at 5 yards, and the adrenaline still pumped as the big bear\u2019s chest heaved slowly. After the intense barrage, all was silent except for the bruin\u2019s labored final breaths and the sliding and clicking of magazines as the pair checked to see how many cartridges remained.\u00a0Outdoor Life<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A full-grown bear covers ground like a race horse, I am told – but at just 10 yards away even a slow bear will leave you mere seconds to react. As it was, they shot 16 times total and hit the bear 13 times – you may think it impossible to miss a bear that size at that range but I assure you, that was damn fine shooting on their part. For you 10mm users, Andy’s ammo was Federal 200-grain Punch JHP ammo and Brett using a coffee-can mix of Buffalo Bore 180-grain JHP and hard-cast bullets.<\/p>\n

You would think this a once-in-a-lifetime story, wouldn’t you? I did – and was wrong. Almost exactly four years ago in September 2021 a fellow named Sam Kezar surprised a momma grizzly at 17 yards outside Yellowstone and had to shoot her (also with a G20 in 10mm.)\u00a0 Outdoor Life II<\/a><\/p>\n

Used to be an old joke that you could tell black bear scat by the berries in it, and grizzly scat by the hunters’ remains and the smell of bear spray. I notice in the second story the hunter’s buddy tried to use bear spray and it blew back in his face – luckily he also had a gun and hit the bear with it. (With bear spray in his face? Superlative shooting!)<\/p>\n

Quick side note – when I saw the first story I looked at the comments on it – you would be astounded at how many people thought the bear should have won, they were evil hunterz, etc.\u00a0 \u00a0Me, I thinking taking on a grizzly with a handgun is being on the wrong end of the survivability equation, in most cases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

July 19th a pair of former Green Berets were scouting locations in Alaska to bow-hunt moose … A different kind of feel-good story<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":668,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[218,630,156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-feel-good-stories","category-green-beret","category-guns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=172134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=172134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=172134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=172134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}