My first hunting handgun was a Contender with a 10" 357 Herrett barrel. Shot it open-sighted for about a year, then sold a 30-30 rifle to pay for a scope. Before long the Herrett started to tear up the scope. Burris was kind enough to repair the scope for free - plus they offered some suggestions for mounting the scope properly on the Herrett, but after trying their suggestions the Herrett chewed up the scope again. Eventually I read about SSK, and after I had them install a TSOB base with 4 rings I never had another scope problem with that Herrett barrel again.

I hunted elk with the Herrett a couple of times, and although I didn't connect on an elk I did eventually take a nice 8 pt. whitetail (158gr XTP/FP @ 2100 fps).

That barrel took quite a bit of abuse from me - not because I deliberately treated it poorly, but because it served as my initiation into wildcat cartridges, and I had just taught myself to reload the previous year (I had bought a rock chucker kit which came with the Speer manual, and that was the only source that I had for learning to reload). Since I didn't know anyone who reloaded, I eventually made all of the typical beginner's mistakes on my own, and the Contender/Herrett barrel took the brunt of those mistakes without a hitch. Anyway, between fireform loads and hunt loads, I probably put better than a thousand rounds through that barrel, which I finally retired earlier this year. And what did I replace that barrel with? A new 15" 357 Herrett Contender barrel!