I've got a 7 1/2" that is hard chromed and had been worked over by Cylinder & Slide. It shoot's exceptionally well. You would be advised to check your throat diameter and compare it to you barrel measurements, as the the throats are often smaller than the barrel, which swages the bullet to a diameter that is not ideal for accuracy. It's a cheap and easy fix if it is. For bear back-up use the "TC and Ruger only" loads in the hornady #5 manual. The 300gr XTP is a sledgehammer at 1300+ FPS and some 300-325 gr lead loads could possibly provide even greater velocity at safe pressure levels. If you are going to feed it some high-pressure loads I have a tip for you to increase case life substantially. I resize only the portion of the case that holds the bullet. You can adjust the decapping stem in your dies all the way down and resize/decap carefully. The chambers on Rugers in 45LC are way oversized compared to the sized case. I would imagine this has to do with variance in bullet diameter that can be encounterd with this round. If you look at a fired round compared to a unfired round, the difference will be visible as to the diameter of the case. If you full length resize the high pressure loads, just use them two or three times for hot loads and relegate them to cowboy action loads after that. Good luck with this gun, I think the Bisleys are superior to the standard Blackhawk in every way unless weight is a concern.