[fred cook]

A good choice, gunwise! In that environment, only a 44 mag or perhaps something heavier (?) is needed. My heavy artillery is a Ruger Redhawk in 44 mag with the early short 3.9" bbl. My "heavy" load is a 200 gr solid running at 1600 fps out of the short bbl. That should be enough to brain even a bear! The Redhawk is one of very few revolvers that I would shoot that load out of. I checked with the manufacturer (Georgia Arms in Atlanta) and they said they had tested the hot load in a Redhawk with no issues.