I recently picked up a Marlin in 444 so I looked for my old loading notes, this being my third 444. Back in 1978 I shot a couple of deer with the Remington factory 240 grain load and in my notes I wrote a bit much for east Texas Whitetails but OK. I then loaded some of what I thought were the same bullet from Remington in 240 grains to top speeds using H4198. The notes have remarks like "cut deer nearly in half, way too much for the little deer". I went to a cast bullet which back in those days the 240 was a standard and I still have the same mold to play with. I loaded the marlin down to 1800 fps and things were fine again. Turns out the 240 gr. bullet sold by Remington was not the same one in the factory load and 2300 fps was too much for it. Back in the seventies there were some feral hogs around but I rarely saw any to shoot at. I can see the heavies as having some use for bigger game or if the lighter bullets don't shoot well enough in your rifle. I have some 300 gr. Nosler HP's I got from SPS for a song and they are nicely accurate but I am most likely just going to shoot them up for barrel break in. I have ordered some 265 gr. Superperformance from Hornady to hunt with and get some full length brass. I got the rifle with 50 of the rubber tipped 265 gr factory loads, shot ten up and have been using the short brass to play with loading several different bullets. The suck part is to crimp I have to use a 44 magnum seating die! Short cases just to use a funny looking rubber tipped bullet? WTH!
I ground off the bottom of my 444 seating die so I could crimp the shorter cases. Works well. Actually ended up with two sets of dies, so I use the shorter seater for the shorter brass, and the longer seater for the longer brass.
I don't think the funny looking bullets give you much in actual ballistic advantage. I got a bunch of once-fired short Hornady brass nearly for nothing, and they work exceptionally well with some cast bullets that don't want to fit my leade in regular brass, without crimping out of the crimp groove. It works okay using a Lee FCD, but it also works to use shorter brass.
