How the grips fit your hand is FAR more important than being made from a squishy material. Rubber is a poor substitute for proper fit. What makes for comfortable shooting is a properly rounded shape that keeps the sixgun planted in your grasp by filling the voids in your palm. The ambidextrous palm swell of Hogue grips won't do this.
Amen! That's a point that doesn't get repeated enough in the handgun world, and a point that escaped me for several years when I first started shooting. The grip needs to fit your hand properly, not just be made out of something squishy! A grip that fits your hand properly keeps your hand from getting beat up as it isn't rattling around due to poor hand grip interface. Fortunately there are a lot of grip makers and grip materials out there that happen to be beautiful, functional, AND durable.
For example, the Hogue Bantam grip is plenty pliable, but beats the hell out of my hand because it doesn't fill my hand properly. I need a larger grip with a closed backstrap for proper fit. I also happen to have really boney fingers, so that adds to the problem. It seems to me that folks with meaty fingers are able to shoot guns with a wider range of grip sizes than we skeleton finger folks. It's one of the reasons I greatly prefer revolvers, as the grips are totally replaceable and are far more customizable than any semi-auto, with perhaps the exception of the VP9. (There's a lot of creases involved in that grip though, so we'll see.) So as a result, I shoot revolvers a lot better and more comfortably than most semiautos. with the exception of J frames. I can shoot them accurately, but they bounce around in my hand and hurt. A larger grip would defeat the purpose, so I stick to Ruger SP101's as the smallest revolver I'm willing to carry, as they are a bit chunkier and easier for me to handle well.
That being said, I have left the Hogue Decelerator grip on my 460V, as it does fill my hand properly and gives me a good purchase on the weapon, and makes shooting 460 loads pretty comfortable. Still though, I see a set of Nill grips in that gun's future as my grip can still be improved a bit more. The main problem is a lot of folks don't want to spend a few hundred dollars on custom or semicustom grips that fit them perfectly. I consider myself lucky that Nill grips suite me, as they only run about $200 on average.
