I leave a week from today to head out of Homer, Ak for my first bear hunt of the year, and my first planned hand gun hunt. It's only black bear, that's not the deal, but I am starting to second-guess my being ready to shoot cleanly and properly enough with a handgun to justify the attempt. I guess I just do not want to be irresponsible, I don't know.

I can get better than 2" groups at 40 yds off of shooting sticks on a good day, so it's not even really a question of accuracy. But as the count down to the day gets closer, I'm lookin at the 45/70 guide gun more and more, simple because I know what I can kill with that and at what distance, I've done it so many times before.

Were these type of second thoughts about the handgun normal for any of you old hands when you first switched over from the rifle? All of my hunting partners shoot rifles, and don't get the hand-gun thing, so I'm swimming upstream there too. Any thoughts or advice from anyone?

BTW - The gun is an original 3-screw SBH .44 mag with 305grn hard cast Buffalo Bore with a Bushnell 2X6 scope on top.