I have killed around 5 deer with hard cast and 18 or 19 with 9-12 BHN and the deer take a longer time to die when hit well with hard cast. The medium cast still exits deer but the wound size is much larger and deer die faster. If it turns into a wadcutter or 1.5x caliber or
less expansionand still makes it to the 5th water jug it kills deer much better than a bullet that penetrates 12 milk jugs. The magic spot in handguns lethality for wound size and penetration is when your WFN bullet grows into a wadcutter or slightly larger because your alloy is soft enough. Aim for bones and have a tracker dog on call if you hit a deer in the rear upper lungs with those hard bullets. I have personally seen double lunged deer with hard cast go over 200 yards through swamp thickets and need a finishing shot a half hour later. 1200 foot pounds of wounding potential doesn't mean squat when the bullet exits the deer and still has 900 foot pounds left.
A rock hard 44 mag, especially high sectional density, will leave a pencil sized hole and a pinkie sized bruise. If your meplat grows from .34 to .45, the AREA of the meplat doubles, from .36 square inches to .64 square inches. Now you are leaving a thumb sized hole and a 3 inch wide bruise around the hole. And still have enough penetration for Texas heart shots.
The 44 mag was developed with plain base 16:1 at 11 BHN. I think Elmer could shoot wounded mulies at 600 yards with 11 BHN plain base
. If you can't get good accuracy with 10 BHN lead and a gas check maybe look into what is wrong with the revolver and fix that - such as inconsistent throats or tight spots in the barrel.
Below is a 1400 fps hard cast wound in a squirrel. Small hole like a 9mm rn even though I used a wfn 357. No bruising. The pic with two mushroomed bullets were some controlled expansion mushrooms in 2-2-96 recovered in deer. One was recovered in front of the shoulder after a Texas heart shot. One went through about 1 foot of neck vertebrae from under the chin all the way to the shoulder blades. Both bullets mushroomed exactly like they did in water jug tests and this load penetrates 5 jugs. The other pictures show a few 10 BHN bullets with 1100-1200 fps impact velocity where the meplat has doubled in area by growing into a wadcutter.