What are some of your favorite .357 Magnum loads?
A lot of the stuff available from the factory is kinda weak sauce. People don't like recoil, and I think the best-selling .357s these days are little lightweight snubbies, amplifying the recoil (and producing big muzzle blast with 2" barrels). It's no uncommon to get a 158 grain bullet at 1150 feet per second, which is well within the ballistic envelope of .40S&W. No slouch, and deeper penetration due to the sectional density, but not exactly an ass-kicker, either.
There is "full power" .357 ammo available from Buffalo Bore, Double Tap, Grizzly Cartridge, and some others. It costs a buck a round or more, but it's there for when you care enough to send the best. 158 grain bullet at 1400+. 180 grain hardcast at the same velocity for critter defense. 125 grain going much faster than the traditional 1400 FPS, closer to 1600.
There are downsides, too. Recoil, blast, too much penetration in a residential environment. I think .357 Magnum is one of the most versatile cartridges out there, though. From mild to wild, it can do anything you might want to do with a conventionally sized handgun. You can download it into 9mm territory (or shoot .38s) or hot load it.
When I was working up in the mountains last year, I had my SP101 concealed in a pouch on the waist belt of my pack, loaded with Buffalo Bore heavy ammo. There aren't a lot of pocket-sized guns I'd want to deploy against pissed-off wildlife, but a deep penetrating, heavy .357 load gives you a chance against even big critters like bear or moose.
It's not by any means ideal, don't get me wrong. It's probably marginal
at best for such big animals, maybe like using a .32ACP on a pissed-off adult man. But carrying guns was
verboten, a terminatable offense, even though our teams had run-ins with moose, bears, even some stripe of mountain lion. A concealed .357 with heavy hardcast loads is better than the .454 Casull you leave at home because it's too big to hide.
(FWIW, the one time I had a close encounter with a moose, I hid in the truck and let him go about his business. He was a big ol' boy, in rut, and I didn't want to agitate him or see how well that .357 would or wouldn't work against a critter many times my size.)
That said, what are YOUR favorite .357 loads? Full power, mid-range, or mild. Have you taken any game with them, or chronographed them, to gauge performance? Factory or handload, makes no difference.