Ah, not a Desert Eagle fan then.

If you get the right .50 handgun, it's not recoil you have to worry about. The Desert Eagle is a shining example of that. Unfortunately, the slide on it is so violent in how it slides back that you really don't notice the lack of recoil...

Besides, if I'm going up against bear, I want a pistol designed for sport shooting. That means I'm more likely to take along a Desert Eagle than a Glock. Which means I will spend a lot of time in the firing range before I even go on such a trip. No way in hell am I taking a weapon I'm unfamiliar with. That would be more stupid than covering myself with gasoline and setting myself on fire to chase off the attacking bear.

One thing I never noticed about shooting the DE50 was a lack of recoil. There's plenty of it. But there is a lot more muzzle blast, and I think that is probably the more distracting of the two. Compared to the S&W 500 though (which puts out nearly twice the muzzle energy of the DE50 and was what I believe Critias was referring to), I would guess that the DE50 seems rather tame. There was a goodly span of years between the times I had the opportunity to shoot them, though from memory I would say it's safe to assume that the DE50 is a bit more manageable.

Actually, I really was just making a joke. Haven't had the chance to try a Deagle, so no like/dislike either way.

I've never shot a Deagle .50, but I have shot two different .44's and a .357. In all three cases we experienced trouble with the safety at least once throughout the day, and one of the .44's could barely make it through a clip without going safe. The problem is that the safety is a lever on the back of the slide, and down is safe. The jarring from firing the weapon can be enough to shake the lever down and cause it to go into safe mode - not a position I would care to be in if I'm depending on the weapon for protection. This may just be due to poor maintenance, but I experienced the same problem each time, and have spoken to other shooters who have seen the same thing. Of course, I have also spoken to some owners who looked at me like I was batshit crazy when I asked them about it, so YMMV.

Long story short - I'll probably never pay for one.

I feel really stupid talking about toy guns, but same principle really: one of my airsoft rifles the fire selector tended to get accidentally pushed to safe when I transitioned between shoulders. I solved it by taping the area the lever travels over, creating friction and no space between the lever and tape. Worked really well. (I also taught myself to place my thumb so it touches the fire selector whenever possible so I actually feel that it is in the right position, but that probably doesn't work too well when it's on the slide )

Yeah. I've shot both the DE50 (IIRC about 40 rounds and it was a well-used rental gun) and the .357 (about 300 rounds) and never ran into that problem. The biggest problem I remember was the DE50 occasionally bouncing brass off of my forehead. And that's pretty substantial brass.