Just for the record I don’t know a lot about guns or hunting. This is just a thought experiment based on my experience with a hunting video game but now I’m curious if the concept could maybe be actually good.
So in “theHunter: Call of the Wild” there’s a revolver modeled after the Taurus Judge that’s chambered for .45 Colt as well as .410. It’s pretty interesting but not all that useful in practice since it lacks range and power. To my knowledge the actual Judge isn’t marketed as a hunting sidearm but rather as a self defense weapon.
So I got thinking how it could be improved upon and came up with what you see in the sketch. Kind of a bullpup design to give you more barrel length while retaining pocketability, weaver rail for sights, and a grip for better accuracy.
Would this just break and burn your hands or is there a way this could work? And would it even be an improvement? One drawback I’m seeing is that you couldn’t fire multiple shots in single action unless you fan it cowboy-style but I’m not sure how relevant that is for irl hunting. I feel like as long as the trigger isn’t impossibly hard to pull double action with birdshot could be viable for duck hunting and in most other scenarios you’d probably take one shot at a time anyway.
So yeah, thoughts?
I am a hunter. Pistols suck for hunting in general, even as a sidearm.
A sidearm is only useful for defense against aggressive animals, and killing wounded or trapped game.
A pistol is just too weak and too hard to aim.
A modern hunting rifle can be both strong enough as a primary gun and short enough to use in underbrush, is much easier to aim, has more stopping power, more ammo capacity and is faster to fire than a pistol.
Not to “ackshually” you but there are people who hunt deer and elk (and probably other large animals) with magnum revolvers. See the .460 S&W magnum which my uncle has taken many deer with using a revolver chambered in it
Weren’t all the Magnum rounds developed with hunting in mind?
Some people still hunt with bow and arrow, too. That doesn’t mean it’s a good hunting weapon compared to other options available today.
People do that as a challenge, to increase the difficulty in order to satisfy their own ego.
But it also increases the chance that the animal will be wounded instead of killed quickly, and will suffer unnecessarily.
IMO if you use anything but the best available tool for the job, you’re being irresponsible and showing that your own desire to brag or challenge yourself is more important to you than the animal’s suffering.
Just to be clear, I am not advocating for hunting with handguns (magnum or otherwise). I was simply pointing out that people do it and that effective round exist for that purpose
Not to mention that the difference in length for a bullpup handgun is likely negligible, compared to a regular handgun. Contrast that with a rifle, where the action is far away from the shooter’s shoulder and could be moved much closer without needing to re-engineer the firing mechanisms much.
I think if you’re going to bullpup anything, and it must be a handgun caliber, you’re better served by bullpup-ing a PCC rather than a handgun.