It was what he had. It wouldn't have made sense for him to just watch it run away wounded when he might get a hit on it and at least help it die a little faster.I don't see why. He wasn't carrying the .44 for big game hunting so I can't see how there's any contradiction.
Look, I don't think that .22LR is a good choice for self-defense, and if people ask me about it, I recommend against it. But if someone attacked me and all I had was a .22LR (maybe coming back from a range trip), I wouldn't stand there and let the guy kill me because I was afraid of people thinking that I was being inconsistent with my previous recommendations that make it plain that I don't think .22LR is a very good self-defense cartridge.
When you get in a jam, you use what you have even if it's not what you would normally use and even if you have recommended against it in the past. That doesn't create any sort of a contradiction.He certainly shot a lot of animals with handguns, but they were primarily pest animals like coyotes and other varmints, not game animals--or they were shot in extenuating or carefully controlled circumstances, as I recall. If you have specific examples, of him hunting big game animals with handguns, and you provide them, I'll see if I can look them up in his writings. I have most of his books. It would be interesting to see what the circumstances of the hunts were to see if/how they aligned with his stated ideas about what's reasonable for big game animals.