Ha ha! I used to love shooting handguns and it's always a little sad that I can now only shoot the co2. I still have a lot of fun with them, but it just lacks something and the quality of the co2 pistols really feels poor after shooting the real steel.

I never found the .44 to be much of a problem, though I never shot it in less than a 6" barrel; .357 on the other hand, always hurt, slapping hard into the palm of the hand, whereas the .44 was just a big push. The biggest, baddest revolver I ever shot was a .45-70 BFR. Again, the recoil was a lot more manageable than you'd think, the shape of the revolver causing the barrel to rotate upwards in the hand and taking a lot of the jarring out of each shot.

The Glocks I always found to be very accurate, the best of the lot for me was the 36, a compact, single-stack .45 with which I could shoot some remarkable groups, even at range. Very solid and reliable, the grip angle did feel a little odd after the usual semi-autos. The nastiest semi-auto I ever shot was a Kel-Tec in .380. Please, never shoot one, it is just nasty!