Being from an early homesteader's family out on the Tok Road in the Copper Valley, before it became "civilized", we always had a lot of guns at our disposal. However the ones we actually relied on were the Stevens .22, the Remington 30.06, the Winchester 30-30 and for working in the brush where Mr Bear was likely to pop up right at your elbow at any time we carried a Ruger 357 on the hip. 
My uncle from Minnesota gave my dad a huge old 348, said we needed it for grizzlies. But the only time we ever used it was when Mom grabbed it by mistake and ran out behind the house and shot a caribou. It was so loud it shook the house and blew the whole head clear off the caribou! Dad chuckled the entire time he skinned it and hung it up from the bottom of the cache. (the cache was 17 feet to the floor)  Mom never did live that down!