Alright sorry it took me a while to get back to you on this, first a few notes.
I'm sorry for how long this reply is about to be but I felt a need to address the the various points of CraigC's reply. Feel free to skip this if that's of no interest to you.
Secondly I have no problem with big bore rounds if that's the impression I'm giving. I'm just under the impression that the lower limits of a cartridge seem to be irrelevant to many in this discussion and it is has turned into more of a:
"this round can kill the biggest thing, it can kill anything below that biggest thing, therefore it has the most versatility"
Which I personally feel is a poor way to define versatility.
Lastly, thanks to CraigC for the discussion, hopefully I manage to convey my ideas in a way that draws less backlash. The 357 Magnum's versatility lies in that it is more suitable for small game and equally suitable (with trade offs on both sides) for medium targets (deer/person sized) than a large bore handgun (which swaps small game for large game).
Here we get into extreme and exaggerated examples. It proves nothing but the inexperience of the person making the statement.
First off, ouch. Next, you yourself later go on to propose a custom tailored 45 load for killing small game. Following your same standards of versatility we can down load a 500 magnum which has the higher upper limit which is the only relevant factor.
I've only been hunting with handguns for 30yrs so maybe I've missed something but if I were hunting small game with a big bore, I'd be using cast bullets at low velocities and not be wasting as much meat as a hyper velocity .22LR. Not "blowing away" anything or irresponsible in the least. Of course, this is purely hypothetical, no one actually does this.
No one actually does this, exactly. Yet many of the arguments present in this thread are only taking into account the upper limit of what a cartridge can do while theory crafting that these cartridges can be specialty loaded to perform like smaller cartridges.
FACT: A .44Spl launching a 250gr cast bullet at 900fps will kill any deer that walks deader than fried chicken. It does this without expansion, from any angle and without eardrum shattering blast. I am fairly certain that this does not constitute "overkill". In fact, it will result in less bloodshot meat than a rapidly expanding, high velocity .357 load.
You're talking about shooting a medium sized animal with a big bore handgun. It's hardly overkill, it's just a step down compared to what you could do with a .429 bullet. The larger the animal the less this sort of overcompensation matters. There's no practical point with something the size of a deer where you're wasting a relevant portion of the animal.
Along the same lines though a .429 bullet might be a little much for smaller game unless we're going back to theory crafting ways to lob a chunk of lead to minimize damage.
.I'm also fairly certain that .500's have not been submitted as a viable alternative to the .357.
That's very true but again our idea of versatility for the 44 Magnum is that it's upper limit is higher than the 357 Magnum with theoretical lobbed chunk of lead representing our lower limit. So by these standards I fail to see how the 500 Magnum isn't superior to both of those rounds, I'm sure it can also be loaded for small game.
Versatility is not subjective at all. It is purely objective. How it applies to the individual is subjective.
I completely disagree with you here unless there is a formula for versatility that I am unaware of. Kinetic Energy is objective. Momentum is objective. Versatility only exists in how it applies to an individual. We could make some system to measure versatility, and while operating within said system versatility would be entirely objective, but to the best of my knowledge this has not happened.
I have NEVER had a shortage of appropriate bullets for the .44's and .45's as compared to the .357. FACT is that one can literally hunt everything from rabbits to elephant with three or four different bullets.
3. Even if you reload the 357 magnum has an absurdly more diverse component selection than any big bore handgun.
I'm hardly arguing that a more diverse selection of components is crucial. I'd say it's more novel than anything. It's not even an indicator of the capabilities of a cartridge, it's more of a byproduct of the popularity of a cartridge.
Thanks again CraigC I look forward to learning from you about big bore handguns (I'm a bit new to them)