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The reasons for carrying a handgun out in the bush are quite similar to the reasons for carrying one in Anytown, USA. You may go for years and years without needing one, but on those rare occasions when you do need one, you need a good one and you need it right now.
As has been mentioned before on this thread, if you are on a two week backpacking trip your pack is going to be too doggone heavy and you will resent each and every ounce. That backpacker par excellence, Colin Fletcher, author of The Complete Walker and The Man Who Walked Through Time, used to clip the strings and paper tags off his tea bags. After you carry a 90 pound pack and try to make more than 10 miles a day in rough country, you will too. You will also worry long and hard over the amount of your ammunition; is twelve rounds enough or will six do fine? Either that or you'll give up on the whole deal.
In other words, your handgun and ammunition need to be absolutely as light as possible. Let's not even discuss rifles, shotguns, and ultramagnum pistols with 18 inch barrels. You're not hunting, you're not planning on shooting anything at all; you're merely budgeting a small portion of your heavy load for self defense or survival on the small chance that you will need it. Two pounds of weight is pushing the upper limit of tolerance, and you will curse every ounce of it while you drag your weary, thirsty body and excessive burden up that long steep hill on blister-ridden feet.
Your gun needs not only to be light, but also powerful; powerful enough to save your tail from a threat that is greater than you had planned for. Human bad actors are relatively easy to stop. Large animals, whether carnivore or herbivore are a bit more of a challenge. They may be larger, a lot larger, than you are. They are certainly faster and stronger, and have larger teeth, claws, antlers, hooves, etc., than you do. Basically, it is impossible to have a gun that is too powerful.
I happen to think that a .357 Magnum is a decent round (by no means too powerful) to handle a typical two-legged predator, or an ill-tempered, 80 pound pit bull. For something like a 200 pound mountain lion or a 300 pound bear, I would prefer something more powerful. For something like an irate mama moose or a surly brown bear, I would like something a lot more powerful. I think the .41 Magnum is a minimum for black bear or lion country, and the .44 Magnum is a minimum for brown bear or moose country. For auto pistols, the .45 ACP, .357 SIG and 10mm are significantly substandard for lion and black bear. They are utterly inadequate for brown bear and moose. It's kind of like you wouldn't want to face a bunch of bikers with a .25 Auto, would you?
That late, great master of handgunnery and father of the .44 Magnum, Elmer Keith, once said something to the effect that " If you carry a pistol in the wilds, and use it every day for thirty years, you can hardly help learning something about it", and that is precisely what he did. He was intimately acquainted with the concept of the "hot load." Elmer's favorite carry gun, in town and country, was a Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum with a four inch barrel and custom ivory grips. I'm not as wiry or recoil-tolerant as Elmer. I am partial to the S&W 329 with the polymer grips from the S&W 500 and it is so light as to reside near the limits of shootability. When I carry it, I usually consider myself to be adequately, but not excessively, well armed. It is a very good compromise between power and lightness: if it were any lighter, you would have to use a weaker cartridge to make it shootable. If it were any more powerful, it would have to be heavier to be shootable. It is light enough to carry in the bush day after day, and powerful enough that you will not be underarmed except in the most dire of circumstances.
To carry this beast, and it is a beast, I would recommend a shoulder or chest holster that is independent of your backpack, and which will stay with you if you have to dump your pack in a big hurry. The holster itself should be quite light and comfortable enough to wear in bed. I'm not saying that you need to wear it to bed, just that you should not be inhibited from doing so if you deem it advisable. The holster should keep the revolver on the weak hand side, slightly high and toward the front; and accessible to your shooting hand whether you are tangled up in brush, curled up in a defensive posture, or taking a dump with your pants around your ankles.
Although the .44 Magnum is on the powerful side for a pistol cartridge, it is still only a handgun cartridge. You can't afford to mess around with large, dangerous animals. Even if you kill the beast, if he manages to wound you you are dead meat without prompt medical care. That is not usually available out in the bush. A shot right through the heart is not good enough. You need to hit Mr. A. Nasty Bear or Mr. Bodacious Lion right between the eyes. Actually, for a charging bear, the Alaska wildlife authorities recommend that you aim for the nose for a frontal brain shot. As a bear gets closer to you it becomes technically easier to get a good brain shot. Unfortunately, it also gets easier to become completely flustered and miss the beast entirely while you are soiling your drawers. The answer is practice, practice, practice.
Have a nice walk and God bless.
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