I have had a Marlin 444 since about 1975 and as Seafire said above, the factory loaded rounds back then (the only load for them back then) was a Remington 240 soft point. It was a deer killing rig for sure. As he stated, the bullet was intended to run at 44 mag speeds and the 444 added about 1000 FPS to that. I loved the way it preformed on deer so when I started loading for it (about a year later) I used Speer 240 soft point bullets and later Sierra 240 JHP's. Both worked like magic on whitetail deer. I was loading the max load shown in the old Speer green manual of IMR 4198. Still have that gun and still use that load. The 444 is not a long range shooter my any means and sighted in dead on at 100 yards has something like 10 inches of drop at 200 yards.
As Seafire stated above, recoil is there for sure but not unmanageable, but it is not fun to shoot off a bench for sure.
I could see a lighter bullet like a 200 gr XTP being pushed faster, but don't think I would want to. I think someone is trying to make a race horse out of a plow mule.
