The first handgun I ever used for deer was a 6” 27 at 9yrs old, and while I have taken a couple dozen deer with 357mag since then, it has never been a cartridge for which I ever really cared very much. Compared to the 44mag or even 41mag, the 357mag just isn’t so impressive...
I spent about 20yrs of my life in search of the “ideal whitetail revolver,” working with all sorts of magnum and super magnum cartridges, and believe I finally found it a few years ago - I’m very close to what I consider ideal today, with one more “Gen 2” version planned soon.
My current Gen 1 “ideal whitetail revolver,” which I consider to be the Ultimate 357, is a 7.5” Ruger Redhawk, reamed to .357/44 Bain & Davis Mag, with a Leupold 2-8x up top. I do plan sooner than later to transplant another reamed .357 mag cylinder into a Super Redhawk with a custom barrel, likely 10-12” plus a brake, done with a Bowen GP44 style nosejob and a Bayside Custom freefloat tube around the barrel with an ARCA Mount. In the current 7.5” barrel, I can push the Speer 180grn up over 1900 without breaking a sweat, up over 2000 before I start getting excessive pressure signs. It was built with supported shooting in mind, but it does balance surprisingly well for off-hand shooting. The intent for the revolver was 250yrd deer hunting, although I have not yet found the opportunity to reach so far after deer with it.