NWHunter -I have always had a weakness for short barrel big bore pistols.
That Ruger looks like a good bear country backup.
I tore my right wrist up shooting a 4" S&W29 I had with some Garrett 300 grain loads. The pistol had Pachmayer grips on it and the first shot with those hot loads felt someone had stabbed me with a knife. Later found i had detached the tendon. So, I tamed down what I allow myself to shoot in handguns. If I had had wood grips on the 29, I would never have had that problem. Those rubber grips work to well at times.
Anyway, nice pistol.
I read your post with considerable interest. What exactly did you mean by saying that wood grips would have eliminated the problem?
A 4 inch S&W 29 is a fairly lightweight revolver for full power .44 Magnum loads in my opinion. And even more so for those Garrett 300 grain loads.
Personally I have shot a number of various 300 grain loads through a 4 inch M629. I liked carrying the gun, but I did not like shooting those loads.
My revolver had Pachmayr grips on it which I thought helped with the recoil somewhat, but basically I felt that continued shooting of those loads was going to ruin my wrists and hands, regardless of what grip was on the gun.
I now have arthritic thumbs, and shooting loads like that is out of the question anymore. So my current carry loads are somewhere in the area of a stiff .44 Special, if that. Even at that level, the recoil is a bit stout so I may soon be reduced to ordinary .44 Specials.
I think those might actually work better for my purposes anyway. Particularly if I have to shoot with one hand.
Last spring a young man who was hunting for shed elk antlers ended up having to do exactly that. He ran into a mad sow grizzly at close range, and the bear was all over him.
He had a borrowed handgun which the bear promptly knocked away, and by some miracle, he was able to get that handgun back. He ended up killing the sow grizzly while shooting one handed with the bear on him, and having to use the arm that the sow grizzly had already torn up pretty badly.
The range was at contact distance, and he was incredibly lucky to have survived the encounter.
I think about that scenario and I think it might be better to have a less powerful load that I could manage with a single hand under tough circumstances.
The young man killed the sow grizzly with a .357 Magnum that he had never fired before!
Wyowind