The tremendous life force of a brown bear that “a bullet through the heart won’t stop”… Professionals’ concerns about police officers’ “bear extermination”.

Even if shot in the heart, it will run 100 meters.

Due to a series of bear appearances, a National Public Safety Commission regulation allowing police officers to use rifles to exterminate bears came into effect on November 13. The police officers are now allowed to use their rifles to exterminate bears,

The association gives beginners years of hunting experience in the mountains before they decide whether or not to shoot a bear,” he said. Until then, even if they see a bear in the mountains, we instruct them not to shoot it and to return home.

Yasuo Tamaki, the leader of the brown bear prevention team of the Sapporo Branch of the Hunting Fraternity Association of Japan, says, “Shooting bears is so dangerous. Shooting bears is that dangerous.

Even if a bear has damaged its heart, lungs, or other vital organs, it can still run 100 meters and hide in the bushes, and it has the fighting ability to intercept humans who are chasing it,” he says.

Tamaki says that although the bears he deals with are brown bears, the same is probably true of large black bears.

Sometimes they will run toward the person who shot them, and other times, when you approach them thinking they are dead because they are not running, they will suddenly get up and attack you,” he said.

So none of our members will approach a bear that has been hit unnecessarily,” he said. We would watch the bear for a while, and then slowly and deliberately go around it from a direction where it was not facing us. And if there is even the slightest sign of life, we shoot it again in the head.

It’s an amazing life force to shoot a bear through the heart and still be able to run.

Eventually, the bear will bleed to death, but it takes a long time for that to happen. In order to keep them from moving, the shooter must be able to finish off the nerves leading from the brain to the spinal cord with a single shot. If you can sever the nerve that controls the motor nerves, the bear cannot move, even if it should live. We can get close to it and finish it off there. That is the kind of sniping we try to do.

So, is it as simple as just aiming for the brain?

If you hit perpendicularly to the head, it’s good, but if the angle is shallow, it’s not lethal. You also need to be able to judge the angle at which you can inflict a fatal wound.

Why You Should Never Shoot a “Bear in High Places

On TV, we often see bears climbing persimmon trees in urban areas. It seems very easy to shoot, but …….

You can’t shoot a bear in a tree because there is no mortar (fill) to catch the bullet. It is also our general rule that, as a general rule, you should not shoot a bear that is on a slope or other high ground. If you shoot a bear that is higher than you are, it will dash toward you as it falls.

Bears are said to normally run at 40-45 km/h, but if they roll down a slope, they can be much faster, leaving you no time to prepare a second shot. That’s why you can’t shoot a bear that’s high up in the air.”

There are also fears that if a gun is fired in an urban area, bullets that hit a wall or other object could ricochet and injure residents.

I trust the police people enough to know how to handle a gun, but it is only by sharing the field with a bear that I can understand how a bear moves and what kind of posture it is trying to adopt. I think it is quite difficult for someone confronting a bear for the first time.”

Can a police officer make this decision? Professionals are concerned about “experience” and “information sharing.

This year, the appearance of bears in urban areas has become a major topic of conversation. In fact, in Sapporo, there was an incident in ’21 when bears appeared in urban areas and attacked people one after another, followed by several more appearances in urban areas.

At that time, we knew that if something similar happened in the future, we would not be able to handle the situation as it is now, so we were working on improving our forces based on the law so that they would be able to respond to bear appearances in the urban areas. This year, many bears have appeared in urban areas of Sapporo, but we were still able to respond to them because our preparations were made just in time.”

Sapporo’s bear control team is made up of a mix of experienced hunters and younger people who are mobile and can use high-tech equipment to control bears.

The members of the hunting club are getting older, and the lack of successors is becoming a problem,

Fortunately, the number of members of the Sapporo Branch has increased over the past two to three years, and there are now 600 to 700 members.

The Sapporo Branch has abolished the seniority system and is now based on the principle of ability. Tamaki laughs, “I may one day be tapped on the shoulder, too.

He is paid when he goes out to hunt bears, but he provides half of that amount to the branch. In order to nurture the next generation of hunters, the Sapporo branch of the hunting club uses half of the money to pay for various events, such as beginner training sessions and shooting competitions.

I am very grateful that the national government has taken the initiative in providing a safety net in the form of a police rifle team.

But if police officers are going to do the same things we do on the front lines of bear control, the risk is high unless they share the same amount of information and experience as we do. We, too, will focus on training our successors, but we’re also waiting for the professionals to step up to the plate.”