As to the title, 460 if I had to choose.
Because I believe in function over many other aspects.
You can shoot 454 and 45LC in a 460, a huge range of pressures and loads.
Easy plinkin with lead 45LC, to serious dangerous game knockdown with 460.
My 2 cents.
I still have not purchased but did finally get out to look at a nice selection at Cabelas.
I really appreciate the posts and insight many have offered.
As I reread the posts I realized how much I missed the first time... mostly because it was all overwhelming at first.
There really is a wealth of knowledge posted here.
Patriot has gotten several complements on his posts and I wish I were as good a writer, his along with several others has brought me to this still struggling conclusion.
I looked at many pistols today and while many were very nice for home use or moderate range, few I found I felt would give adequate trajectory to reach and have reasonable consistent accuracy at 100+ yards without killing my wrist.
I'm a medium frame kinda guy with fairly small wrists... wear 6.5 to 7.5 gloves, weigh about 180lbs and I felt the .460 was a lot of pistol!
What keeps bringing me back to it is the fact that many feel its a good shooter as far as kick and since the long colts will fit it may be smarter to get that with aspirations of moving up bigger if I can tolerate it later on.
I also handled the .44 Super Redhawk. I like the 9.5" barrel and figure it would sooth the kick even more as well as increase velocity a tad.
It seems more reasonable and ammo is plentiful and the kick should be moderate.
However, with the .44 Super Redhawk you have what you have.
But that may be ok if thats all the pistol I will ever want to shoot once I find out how the kick and feel is.
If I get the .460 and find the .454 and .460 ammo is too nasty to shoot, I will be stuck with a .460 shooting long colt .45's which will not achieve the distances I was originally looking for.
The other thought was to shoot .460 ammo with 200 grain bullets.. that would be extremely fast and maybe the kick would be tolerable.
I wonder how the two compare with smaller bullets respectively.
The biggest negative to the .460 was its size.. while that would help with kick, its felt like it was made for a slightly bigger hand.... the middle of the last segment of my index finger of my right hand is where the trigger hit.
When cocked, it fit a little better.
I"m not super motivated by price the the .44 Super magnum is a bit cheaper.
So I boil it down to this question.
Would the .460 shooting 200gr bullets be more reasonable or would I prefer the .44 Super Redhawk shooting 240gr bullets?
I didn't see smaller gr bullets for the .44.
I even considered a 9mm but couldn't find one that looked like a long shooter with barrel length and adequate velocity... but there may be one.
I would appreciate any input someone may have.