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I grew up in South Dakota where rifles are employed for things with four feet (plus turkeys) and rifles are for things with wings (including turkeys). Then I moved to Iowa - shotgun or muzzleloader or straight-walled pistol. I killed lots of whitetails with an Encore pistol in .454 Casull and .357 Maximum. Then I moved to SW Minnesota - same rules, except pistols can be chambered in anything for deer so long as the barrel length exceeds 4" and the projectile diameter is at least .220". I have since hunted deer with my Encore pistol chambered in .260 Rem with 17" barrel, both in MN and SD. Obviously the .260 Rem is a hell of a choice, especially when I can ring up the 8" steel disks at 300 yds with a decent rest. Moral of the story is this - does the area you intend to hunt permit pistol hunting? There are a few times I can think of that I would have rather had a shotgun than my Encore, but not many, and there are several deer that would have walked had I been using a shotgun, but instead they were tagged at 200+ yds with my pistol.