You don't want a death grip, a good firm grip is key. The reason some people get bit with the big bores is they have a death grip for the first shot, then realize it's not so bad. On the second shot they ease up on their grip, then proceed to plant the front sight blade in their forehead. I've shot plenty of 454's 475's and 500's, they aren't as bad as some say, but you do need a good firm two handed grip on them.
The real key to mastering them is lots of dry firing, and limit the amount of full patch ammo you shoot in a range session. You might find a cylinder or two of full patch ammo is all you want to put through it, and that's fine. Trying to shoot through a flinch will lead to long term flinching. I made that mistake about 15 years ago with a 44 mag, and I'm still fighting a handgun flinch to this day.
Personally I prefer the recoil of the heavier bullets, I know it sounds counter intuitive but with the 454 pushing the lighter bullets fast, that ~30gr charge of powder accounts for a very snappy recoil. A 360 gr cast bullet will still have plenty of recoil, but not as snappy.
The other thing to remember is you don't have to load the 454 to the gills to kill big game. A 300-360 gr cast bullet at 1200-1300 fps will take anything in NA, and will be much easier to shoot than the hotter loads.
The reason I settled on the 480 is I had the opportunity to shoot many of the bigger bore handguns and I simply couldn't handle more recoil.
