Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles 444 advise needed

A 444 is nothing but an elongated 44 Mag. The 444 with 44 mag pistol bullets, plain old 240 grain JHPs will kill anything in North America under 200 yards and will drop them dead in their tracks. You just need to do your job as a shooter and hunter, no magic bullet, no magic BC. My first year production Marlin rifle, W/O pistol grip, has never seen a super duper wazoo bullet and never will, it has never taken a second shot to kill either, since 1969. Also never recovered a bullet, it just goes right through and blows the chest contents out the back side. Shoot behind the shoulder or loose half the meat, because the bullet is going through, the ear mark of the 44 Mag, full penetration..

It is an excellent 50-200 yard wooded area hunting cartridge. If you want a bean field rifle buy or build something else.

In my Marlin 444-P days

Hornady's 265 gr flat point was the boss

Then the Gummy Tips come along to replace the FP's

They show to be in stock at sierra web sight!

Well fellas i have decided to press on with the 300 grain xtp loaded to approx 1800 fps. after looking at the numbers the bullet is reamended to have a initial velocity of 900 -1900 fps and this will save me some stress on my shoulder and gun. I believe i can reach this with out a max load.

Miracles do happen....

your shoulder will love you!!!!

i shot a 300gr FN GC with 2400/tuft of dacron at 1624fps and i killed quite a few deer with it. the furthest shot was 63 yards, while 15ish yards is my shortest.

Biggest deer I've ever taken, was 365 pounds on the hoof, according to the MN DNR, when they weighed it on check in.

It was taken on a 30 below day, about 10 in the morning about 50 miles south of International Falls. Our party did a drive into a swamp. They ended up pushing about 50 deer out of there, that were piled up on top of each other for warmth, based on the temp that morning. It wasn't my turn to do the driving.

I was sitting up on a tree, that had been knocked over by a wind storm evidently that summer or the fall/winter before.
Soft soil and the roots came right out of the ground. So I just walked right up the tree's side ( its laying on its side ), to where the root system is up in the air. It was like sitting on top of a 2 to 2.5 story house.

All of a sudden there is this REALLY BIG bunch of deer coming out of the swamp like being shot out of a shot gun... I pull my 4 power Tasco scope ( yeah, it was in 1984 ) up on several bucks running among the does, until I see this one real big buck. While the other deer are mainly going in a NE direction, this one cuts out and runs in a SE direction. We are in the northern MN BIG WOODS...It sees me and does a circle run about 50 to 75 yds out.

I'm tracking him, but I end up maneuvering on this root system, to where I've somehow managed to move a 270 degree swing without falling off this root system. Finally I see an opening to take a shot. The deer ran behind some sapplings when I take the shot.... I see several saplings cut in half with my shot, but I also see the buck go down.

You know how your blood is pumping, when you are at a crucial time in a hunt. I'm at least 2 stories up in the air on this tree's root system. I bail off this tree, like I'm jumping off a stool. There is maybe 3 feet or more of snow on the ground, but I still zip over to where this buck is laying on the ground.

it is huffing and puffing in its last death throws, each time it gasps, the blood is shooting out into the snow, like it was being spit, and it has blood coming out of its nose. I should have just stood there and let it die... but I was a lot younger, so I was thinking I had to put it out of its misery. So I held out the 444 like it was a pistol with a 24 inch barrel. I turned my head away, expecting the blast recoil, to hit me in the face.. ( been there and done that earlier in my years of life ).

I put the muzzle on the deer's neck, turned my head and pulled the trigger. As I did that, the buck had enough energy to do one toss of his head and antlers in my direction. That movement, caused my barrel to go from his neck, to bounce back and be sitting on his front left shoulder. The gun went off, right on his shoulder, and he expired.... BUT there went 10 to 15 pounds of hamburger.

Out of a party of 7, six of us shot a buck out of that group pushed out of the swamp. We threw them all in he back of one of the guy's pick up, and went into town to the Check in station at the DNR office. AS the DNR officer removed the deer from the pick up bed, with all of us standing around, he said to no one in particular.... "Who in the Hell shot this one?" Couple of the guys pointed at me, but the DNR guy never was even looking at us.. AND after his pause, he finished his statement :
" Al Capone?"

It had a 240 gr XTP HP hole in the right side behind the shoulder, and then had a hole where I had pulled the trigger with the muzzle right up against the deer's left shoulder, after he threw his antlers toward me. Took that out completely, along with that 10 to 15 pounds of hamburger. We all had to laugh at that one all together....

at the butcher shop for processing, the guy there when he hung the deer, asked us... "Did one of you use a Tommy Gun on this one?"

A 444 XTP will certainly draw folks attention to the hole it will make in something.



same rifle when I first got it in 1981, I was up at the inlaws in Northern MN, so I took it out to check the scope zero, in the same place we hunted each year. It was a little windy, even by Northern Minnesota standards, so I put a piece of card board tacked up on a pine tree. Walked back about 75 yds or so, using the vehicle for a rest, took 4 shots... slowly and one at a time at the cardboard target. The pine tree was about 10 to 12 inches in diameter, and maybe 40 feet tall.

My hits were at least minute of deer, on the cardboard. This was due to my flinching.. as the 444 definitely had more felt recoil than my 30/06 using 220 grain RN bullets ( factory ammo in those days). So I was carrying the 444 with me, as I was walking to the tree, to take down the cardboard target. Halfway there, there was a big gust of wind, and with the cold being around zero, I looked at the ground, to keep my face from the blowing cold. I then heard a big creak and then wood breaking. I looked up and the tree I had used to hold my target, broke behind were the target was. 4 shots with the 240 grain XTPs, had taken out enough on the exit of the bullets, that a 30 to 40 mph wind gust, finished the job of essentially shooting the tree in half.. with 4 shots. I knew then, that me and that 444 Marlin were going to have a wonderful relationship.

An XTP? A Hornady XTP? In 1984?

Lol.....

Thanks for such a great story!

I never understood the 444 (and no, I've never owned or shot anything with one).

I've used a lever 44 Mag and the 45-70 and never found either lacking for deer or hogs with a decent bullet; never recovered a bullet with either of those so that probably explains the lack of a niche the 444 has never really had and why its purpose built bullet has been discontinued.

It's a story.

Like the one about Corn Pop.

👍

You can shoot the 300 gr. if you want but it is more recoil and cost. I only shot one deer with a 44 cal. It was with a muzzleloader . The bullet was a 44 cal. 240 gr. Remington flat point bullet. The buck was about 130lb. gutted and a shot in the heart . The bullet went all the way through and was dead in 60 yds. Not that I care, but with the cost of everything now days, Seafire is right.. I bet a little dose of Unique would be fine , even with a 180 gr. bullet. I had a 45-70 gov. in my TC Encore and it kicked so hard i went with a 350 gr. and 12? gr. of Unique . The chrony said 1206 fps. I bet I would get a pass through on a moose with tat load. I sold the stupid 45-70 and bought a Ruger American compact in .243 WIn. and have not so much as missed that stupid gun since. Heck,, just 6 bullets added darn near a pound .

It was ammo loaded with a Hollow Point, from a local outfit off of I 35 in Forest Lake MN....

I still have a half full box left over somewhere around here...

if they weren't made back then, then pardon me on that one... It was certainly a hollow point, and they had been making Hollow points for the 44 Rem Mag for quite a while in 1984. Probably handloaded from some other manufacturer then.

Heck, that incident happened 40 years ago... so cut me some slack maybe?

I wonder if he called Hornady about bullet failure ?

The Hornady person would have said, "XTP? What's that?"

I actually used some old 250g fpj Sierra full jacketed silhouette target bullets it my 444. They are fully jacketed over the flat front nose but they still expand quite well at 444 speeds and penetrate pretty well.

https://www.sierrabullets.com/product/44-mag-250-gr-fpj/

I run a mild load of rl10x and there only clocking about 2200fps but they're pretty easy to shoot without much recoil.

I've cast a bunch of lee 310g and powder coated and Gas checked them so I'm working up another load for those. I've also loaded the 270g speer also with 10x to just 2200fps and those shoot well too. I'm not comfortable running xtps to 444 speeds other than maybe the 300g because I've seen what the 200g xtps do from a 44 mag rifle. They are very explosive at rifle speeds.

I also need to work up a load for my m&p 270g hammer mold. I've cast some a bit harder with the flat nose pins in. If they feed and function well they should make a good 444 bullet. They have a very wide flat nose.

Any powder from about aa2200 to varget speed should work pretty well in a 444. I just used 10x because I had a bunch I wasn't using for anything else and it burned pretty clean with milder loads. I've always liked h4198, h322, benchmark, 8208xbr, or h4895 in my 45/70 and I think any off them would work well in 444 too.

Bb

I wonder if he called Hornady about bullet failure ?

Yes I did! Just to entertain you and other campfire members just like ya!

Happy to be of service for your entertainment SWamp...