Just for the record I don't know a lot about guns or hunting. This is just a thought experiment based on my experience with a hunting video game but now I'm curious if the concept could maybe be actually good.
So in "theHunter: Call of the Wild" there's a revolver modeled after the Taurus Judge that's chambered for .45 Colt as well as .410. It's pretty interesting but not all that useful in practice since it lacks range and power. To my knowledge the actual Judge isn't marketed as a hunting sidearm but rather as a self defense weapon.
So I got thinking how it could be improved upon and came up with what you see in the sketch. Kind of a bullpup design to give you more barrel length while retaining pocketability, weaver rail for sights, and a grip for better accuracy.
Would this just break and burn your hands or is there a way this could work? And would it even be an improvement? One drawback I'm seeing is that you couldn't fire multiple shots in single action unless you fan it cowboy-style but I'm not sure how relevant that is for irl hunting. I feel like as long as the trigger isn't impossibly hard to pull double action with birdshot could be viable for duck hunting and in most other scenarios you'd probably take one shot at a time anyway.
So yeah, thoughts?
A few years ago, a company called zenk made a bullpup revolver, in 357. No idea how well it sold, and haven't heard anything since. Haven't gone looking tbh.
The problem with a bullpup design on revolver is the cylinder gap. That's not something you want blowing hot gasses right at your hand. I don't doubt that it's possible to mitigate that to some degree or another, but afaik, you can't eliminate it because the cylinder has to rotate, and that requires some kind of gap.
No reason it couldn't be double action afaik, but that afaik is from someone with zero gunsmith ability. Never learned anything more than what it takes to maintain a firearm.
But the zenk wasn't the first attempt ever. There have been a few attempts going back into the 1800s.
My thought is that at handgun ranges, the extra barrel length isn't exactly a high priority, and that's really all a bullpup design brings to the table (again, afaik, and that ain't far).
Any hunting situation you'd use a handgun, you don't need that long of a barrel to get the job done with reasonable accuracy and velocity. If you're finishing a game animal that didn't die from your initial shot, well, you're right there at it. If you run across a critter that wants to mess with you, and you're needing to shoot it, you want speed more than anything else because if it's that close, you don't want to fuck around. So the bullpup design isn't going to help in that scenario compared to a more standard wheelgun design.
Again, I'm not exactly a smith, and I've never been super into hunting beyond having enough time at it to have basic skills. But I've been fireside at many a rambling debate about such things as a handgun backup in the woods. General consensus qas always that it's a damn good idea, and you want to pick something that can handle what you might actually need to use it on, but that's where agreements tended to devolve into "horseshit, Dink, you'd want a insert firearm, not that damn hogleg" or something similar.
Point being that while you could make any given design work for a hunting sidearm, it's more about being able to get it pointed at the target fast and not needing to empty the damn thing you prevent sasquatch from shitting down your neck.
Realistically, you'd want to gear up for bear, maybe a mountain lion or coyote. I've never heard of anything else (other than humans) going after a human's kill. Even those, it's damn rare overall.
As for actual pistol/handgun hunting, that's a fairly specialized hobby. I don't see many enthusiasts jumping on board to an unproven design, but you might find plenty that would range test to get things going.
Again, I'm a filthy casual when it comes to hunting, so take all that with a grain of salt. Hell, I haven't hunted anything other than a toilet in damn near twenty years, and don't expect to ever need to again. Sp make it a really big grain of salt