I'm a big fan of the .44 Special too, as was the late great Elmer Keith, who based the .44 Magnum on it.
Would love to have an M-1873 SAA in .44 Spl, but they are hard to come by and out of my budget new.
In the Phillipine Moro insurrection, the troops begged for the old Single-action .45 "hoglegs" to be sent over to replace the innefectual M-1901 .38 Colt revolver - much as our Finest in Iraq are now yearning for "Old Slabsides" to make an encore.
Apparantly, the US .45ACP was designed to replicate the "stopping power" of the .45 Long Colt in an auto-loading platform, and Browning essentially designed the 1911 around it.
The rest, as they say, is History.
I use factory equivalent loads for practice and load a little hotter for my carry load. I also carry a .45 long colt wheel gun with hollow points, which has good stopping power but is not quite as accurate as the .44 special, at least in my gun, but at defense ranges it doesn't really matter as long as it shoots decently, IMO.