Question :
Is it feasible to try and start Transactional Replication on a SQL Server DB with deadlocks and blocking issues. Are there any other options for a close to hot backup?
Answer :
Probably not a good idea to add transactional replication to an already struggling db, have you enabled read committed snapshot isolation on the database ? Assuming you have already added appropriate indexes this is normally this is a good place to start with blocking and deadlocking issues (assumes your application uses read committed the default transaction isolation level).