Howdy
A whole bunch of years ago I noticed a friend wrapping a bandaide around the knuckle of his middle finger at a CAS match before proceeding to the loading table to load up his pistols. He was shooting 45 Colt, and mild loads at that. That's when I realized that the knuckle of my middle finger was never whacked in recoil, even though I was shooting full house Black Powder loads under a 250 grain bullet. My friend, on the other hand, was squeezing his entire hand onto the grip. This placed the knuckle of his middle finger directly against the trigger guard, and every time he fired the trigger guard would whack his knuckle.
You will notice in this photo that by tucking my pinky under the grip, my hand winds up a little bit lower on the grip, and this opens up about 1/4" of space between my knuckle and the trigger guard.
I never get whacked by the trigger guard.
I have fairly large hands. Even with my pinky under the grip, I can still reach the hammer spur to cock the hammer.
This of course is directly opposite to everything you have been taught, conventional wisdom says that the hand should choke up as much as possible on the grip, to lower the bore as close as possible to the hand, to reduce muzzle flip. That works fine with most semi-automatics where it is impossible to get any fingers behind the trigger guard. Not so much with a heavy recoiling revolver.
Not that my BP loads are in the 44 Magnum class, but recoil is still stout.
I do not hold the pistol in a death grip. I allow the plowhandle shaped grip to rotate naturally in my hand during recoil. What actually happens is the grip rotates a bit until my pinky stops it. Then the remainder of the recoil impulse lifts my hand and fore arm up a bit at the elbow.
I have been doing this for many years.
Try it, you may like it.
P.S. Your 8.0 grain load of Unique under a 250 grain bullet is the classic load for 45 Colt. Don't go any higher than 8.0 grains of Unique, it is listed as the Max in a couple of my loading manuals.. Back when I was shooting Smokeless my standard 45 Colt load was a bit lighter, 7.5 grains of Unique under a 250 grain bullet.
You might want to try Black Powder sometime. I can only stuff about 33 grains of FFg into a modern solid head case without compressing the dickens out of the powder. Not the old 40 grain load, but a bit more than the later 30 grain Army load.