The boys liked the compact and powerful SA .44

to get a youngster into shooting (if you have to have a 44 and if so then load them some 44 specials up). A SA 44 Mag can be a bit of a brute with hot loads and that Dragoon trigger guard.

A semi auto is a good hunting gun but only in the perfect situation. I used my Auto Mags and Grizzlys for years and took quite a few critters here in the states and in Africa and as long as I knew my limitations and the gun's limitations it all worked fine. But the original Auto Mags and Grizzlys are the only 2 that I would even think of hunting with. The Desert Eagle is a joke with it's horrible trigger, fixed sights, and a gas system, along with it's weight. Only good for B grade movies.
The Wildey has been gone for several years. I keep hearing it is coming back but who knows. It was never reliable when it was available, except with Charles Bronson in his movies.
The Auto Mag is trying to make a comeback. I hope it makes it but the reports I am getting are not the best. Everyone keeps saying it is coming back and better than before, although with good ammo the old Auto Mags were quite reliable.

The premier handgun hunt was, for over 20 years, the Celebrity Handgun Hunt, held at the Y.O. Ranch in Texas. It was a charity handgun hunt by invitation only and 50 handgun hunters were invited. It cost us somewhere from $995 the first year I was there up to around $1500 the last year, and this was hunting the animal the ranch chose as the animal of the year, usually a Sika Deer, although the Axis Deer was sometimes the pick and Whitetail Deer was sometimes the pick but only once or twice as it was more expensive and we had to buy a state deer hunting tag along with the other expenses. The meat of all the various animals was given to the needy at Christmas so it was for a good cause.

If you wanted to hunt something other than the animal of the year, and they had about every exotic animal there was at the time, then you paid the much higher price for that animal.

Most of the guns used at the hunt were Ruger SA and DA, and the fine Freedom Arms revolvers. There were a few of the model 2008 Freedom Arms single shot there too plus probably half of the 50 hunters used single shot Contenders or Encores in various calibers. I saw a few Grizzlys there and there were a couple of Auto Mags. Good friend John Taffin was there and if I remember right he shot a big Bison with a Ruger Single Action. I was there for 15 years and Kase was there with me the last 4 or 5 years. I used various handguns from my Auto Mags to Grizzlys to custom Ruger DAs. I also used the hunt to try out new calibers I had come up with in the previous 10 or 12 months in custom TCs. In 15 years at the Celebrity Handgun Hunt I only saw 1 Desert Eagle show up, and that was with gun writer Dick Williams who was to do an article on it shooting a large animal. And then it functioned about half the time.

The guys that were willing to pay a minimum of $1500 to be part of the Celebrity Handgun Hunt were a bit more serious about the handgun they used.

Another semi auto hunting handgun was the Wildey. The Wildey with it's gas system is almost as bad as the Desert Eagle but at least it had adjustable sights. Still a big clunky handgun that wouldn't do any more than a Grizzly would at twice the weight.

If a new shooter absolutely has to have a semi auto then the Grizzly would be the choice in my opinion. It was simply a big 1911 chambered in 45 Win Mag or 44 Mag. And it had adjustable sights and the trigger pull could be adjusted down to the perfect weight in a hunting handgun. They did a few in 50 AE but these didn't go over very well. But the Grizzly in a good JHP or JSP 45 Win Mag cartridge was hard to beat. They are expensive but about the same as the Desert Eagle or the Wildey.

What all this gets down to is buy the young shooter a good Ruger Super Blackhawk and it will do anything the guns mentioned above will do. Keep it simple.