I would think that a lot of it has to do with ammo, too. I have very little experience with Contenders, but there is a huge difference in shooting my BFR with Remington 405's and shooting it with Buffalo Bore +P's. I think the maybe the difference in recoil is magnified in these hand cannons, compared to the same rifle rounds shot through a rifle. When I went from 1550 fps to 1900 fps in an 1895G, there was a difference, but not that great. When I do that with the BFR, I gotta duct tape my socks to my ankles to keep 'em on. I would expect a Contender that recoils even more to the rear instead of an upwards roll to be even worse. My rather fuzzy point being that wouldn't choice of ammo play a bigger roll in shootability with a large-bore TC than with other firearms we are all familiar with?