You bought a fine lever gun and you can’t beat the 444 Marlin for fun and hunting versatility. It will never be as popular as the 45-70 but it still gets the job done. My Marlin 444 was manufactured in 1967 and is very accurate with the Hornady 265 grain FP and a near maximum load of H4198. The Speer 270 grain SP shoots just as well.
It’s in vogue nowadays to bad mouth 240 grain performance which was initially the only bullet available in the 444 Marlin. But if you go back and read the literature available at the time it was introduced in the mid 1960’s guys like Ken Waters and Rick Jamison spoke very highly of the new 240 grain round and had no problems flattening just about everything they shot with it.
