Quote:
Originally Posted by Superman
I've been looking into handguns. Partly for general purpose/personal protection but largely for backpacking. I found there are as many different viewpoints as there are gun owners. A number of reliable sources insist that a .44 Magnum, at least, is required to confidently stop a grizzly bear. But....I don't plan to see many grizzly bears. Still, I am interested in something that's more than a straw and a spitwad. I'm somewhat in love with the .45 ACP. It's narrow and can be fairly light. Has decent shocking and/or penetrating power. And the double-stack can hold 13 rounds. If I ever do need to use it, I will pull the trigger a number of times. Thirteen seems better than six.
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A .45 auto is a poor choice for animal use, both as a hunting (survival) weapon and as a anti- large dangerous animal defense weapon. This cartridge was developed exclusivily as a anti personell round with extremely limited penetration capabilities. There is nothing wrong with the 1911 firearm platform, all the problems are with the cartridge.
There are just a few commonly available auto pistol cartridges that are truely usefuse for wilderness mixed use (both on animals and people), the Sig .357, the 10mm are two. Both with proper bullet sellection (handloading only) could be made useful.
All or the rest of the commonly available handgun cartrigdes are really revolver only (no cartridges the are not semi-rimless should be depended on for reliability in a semi-auto). A a .41 magnum is bottom of the bucket, .44 magnum, hot loaded .45 Colt, a .454 Casull, .500 S&W magnum, etc. It should be noted that Alsaska keeps very good records on bear attacks and bears killed in self defense. No .44 magnum was used successfully for bear defense as of a few years ago when I last checked. BTW the smallest cartrigde use successfully was a .22! Pure luck with that one.
Now you may fish or hike in an area where there are not Brown Bears (grizzly, Kodiak) and have to contend with just Black Bears and people. Then anything from a .357 Magnum on up will do with proper bullet selection. A hot handloaded 9mm or .40 or a 10mm is a great choice for a semi-auto. If you really wish to use the .45 Auto cartrigde then you will need to load it quite hot and the 1911 platform is ill suited to handle that stress. Try a Glock for that use.
The biggest problem with semi auto pistol use for large anti animal use is bullet selection. There are no commercially available proven hunting bullets suitable for semi-auto pistol use in the larger calibers (over .22). You would have to handload and cast or machine (for monolithic solids) your own bullets.
A Charter Arm pistol of any caliber is subpar for serious use. Yes it is far better than nothing but for the same price you should be able to pick up a used high quality are like a S&W, Colt, Tarus, etc.