JR1,
Please don't interpret this as a flame, but I'd be interested in how you determined that some guns "outperformed" others. Were your testS subjective or in a labortatory under controlled conditions? Were bullet weights the same, etc.?
As an example of what I'm getting at, many years ago, I shot some of the same ammo from two of my Smith .44 mags into a hard, dried juniper stump in NM. The 3" barreled gun's performance showed up pitifully against the 6 incher's--the bullets fired from the 6" gun penetrated twice as far as did those of the 3".
Over the years, when I'd tell people I'd lost all confidence in the 3 inch gun for bears, they would express doubt about the results. Finally, I determined to run new "tests" on Texas cedar, New Mexico being relatively inaccessible at the time. I was in for a surprise.
The guns used were the same two original Smiths, as well as a 4" Smith, a 7 1/2" Super Blackhawk, a 6 1/2" Smith, and an 8" Colt Anaconda. None performed well on penetration and the 3 incher about duplicated the results of the 6 incher it couldn't touch before. There was no appreciable difference in that particular medimum for any of the various barrel lengths. It was a shocker for me.
Candidly, the only real "laboratory" on this issue isn't available to very many of us. I think if we shot, say, about 30 bears with each gun/ammo combos, we'd have a pretty good idea of what that particular combination would do in that arena. Then we'd have to take into account the state of excitement (or lack thereof) of the animals and the exact placements of the shots taken. We'd have to consider if the bear were being hunted or the shooter was the "huntee."
I know of one man-eating black bear which was killed by one of a trailing team of wardens with a standard 158 gr. .38 Spl. load, but that doesn't make me want to rely on that combination. I also heard of a moose being killed by a woman with a snub .22 revolver when she shot to try to scare it from her garden.
The point of all this rambling is that we'll probably each carry what we FEEL will do the job, not what we know will work. Let's hope that none of us ever has to find out!
[This message has been edited by Rod WMG (edited September 10, 1999).]