Front Sight, Press has a great post about the .357 Magnum as a personal defense load.

For the information of anyone who cares:  I carry mine with Remington Golden Sabers.  This cartridge is in between .38+P and full-blown .357 magnum.  According to Remington, their .38+P is around 900 fps (muzzle velocity), Golden Saber .357 around 1200 fps, and full .357 around 1400 fps.

I also live in the country, and like having the option of loading it with something more powerful should the occasion arise.  I'm thinking those reloads I mentioned recently would be very potent wild hog medicine in my rifle.

The versatility of this round is amazing.  For the hunter, with varying loads it can be used for anything as small as rabbits up to medium-sized game like deer, or even some large game if you're really good.  For defense purposes, a new shooter can start out learning with lower-powered .38 loads, and then move up to more powerful loads without even having to change guns.

I would also like to take this opportunity to say that I'm going to create a new category just for the .38/.357 so I can put all these posts in there for easy reference.  I'll probably need to go back and re-categorize some of my old posts.