Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Anyone hunting with the .444 Marlin?

muledeer it also looks like you have changed the lever to one that is easier on the fingers? Who's is it? Thanks
Cheers NC

I don't fully understand why the .444's are considered big bores, they are oversized handgun rounds..... Wouldn't trust one in africa on either plains or DG. That goes for the .450 as well.

Yeah, a 300 grain WFN hard cast going 2200 fps out of a .444 won't kill anything.

Schewe.. Going back over your last ten, and only ten posts, you seem to be running 100% on completely incoherent statements. Is this on purpose, or by accident?

For a person who seems to own all the hunting armament that Schewe owns, he does not seem to have strong grasp of cause and effect, caliber wise. He must be young with more spending money than experience or learning.

Sorry guys, forgot about this thread. For those who asked about the laminated stock, it's the standard Marlin grey laminate stock they use on the XLR. I ordered mine straight from Marlin.

Nope...it's pure from the factory. Winchester made three or four models of the 94 in .444, including this one with half-pistol grip and a synthetic stock. This particular one was made with either a 20" or 24" barrel, at various times. Mine has a 20".

Dennis

I think a 300 gr bullet at 2200 fps will kill lots of things very nicely. I know mine will kill a caribou with a 270 gr Speer at 2100 fps . Within reasonable range, it won't much matter whether it's a 180 gr at 2800 fps or a 300 gr at 2200 fps -- hit them in the right spot, and they will die promptly.

Dennis

If you want to fool with it the case dimensions on a .44-40 work pretty well in a .444 Chamber.

Hmm.. that's interesting. I never thought about that one. I pretty much ran mine full snort, anyway.

I've also heard that the 44-40 works well in the .444. Also heard of people shooting .410 in them, but never tried either of them myself. I've only shot one deer with my .444 Winchester, but it worked very well. It seems that the .444 shoots accurately in most leverguns,as my Winchester also loves the 265gr Light Magnums. Hopefully I'll get to try them on something bigger than deer soon. Anyway,here's my .444,its the 3rd from top.

Anybody use the Nosler 250 gr. Partition? I am thinking about using it in my Marlin 444 XLR. Gonna put a Leupold scout on it and use it to hunt elk in the thick timber(also thinking about cutting 4 inches off the barrel). I was gonna try Leverevolution loads but have not heard good things about em.

Do you reload?

No i don't reload, but i was going to buy some loaded from Conley Precision.

Love them 444’s

I kinda miss having flinch and rancho around.....

444 Big Bore Love

Nice rig Johnny.

"Big Bore" is a relative term. It must be remembered that at one time a 50 cal was mid bore and the 45s were small bores. Coming out of the era of the 58 Rim Fire and the 58 caliber muskets, the 50-70 was "small" and the 45-70 was called a small bore too. In the African hunting world the invention of the 450 Nitro was indeed a small bore when it started making inroads into the world of the 8 bore and the 6 bore.
Here is a big bore............... Unless you have history in the military and in the field of artillery.
2 Bore muzzle by Steve Zihn, on [bleep]
2 bore.
3,500 grain ball.
1650 FPS.
So your 600 nitro is a small bore in comparison to this. I can use the barrels I make 600s from as ram-rods to LOAD this rifle.


But as for the capabilities of the 444, I can speak to it a bit. To start out, I must say I have never personally hunted with one myself, but as the former CEO of Cast Performance Bullet Co, I sold several million bullets to others that did so a lot, and I had a large file of reports on how they worked on game up to and including American Bison, Grizzly Bears, Elk, Moose and many kinds of African Game.

And I do hunt with 2 friend who use the 444 to a large extent and I have personally seen elk, bear and moose killed with them as well as 3 bison.

The 2 bullets that were most successful were the 300 grain WFN CG and the 320 grain WFN GC. Back in the 80s and 90s Marlin didn't seem to have a standard way to cut their lifters in all their 444 rifles, so some would not feed the 320s and others would. All of them could be modified to feed them, but many men only bought the 300 grain bullets instead so they didn't have to bother, and I didn't read any complaints about how well they killed game.

The problem I have heard from some hunters with factory ammo is the face that ALL the ammo loaded for the 444 in it's first 20 years was actually loaded with revolver bullets. So Schewe does have a valid point, but it's very dated. They killed deer sized game very well, but penetration was less then it could be.
Hornady took a large step in the right direction with their introduction of their 265 grain bullet, but the real magic of the 444 was only seen when it was loaded with hard cast bullets with wide meplats and loaded to a C.O.A.L. that would feed. With such loads the 444 does a LOT more then it did in it's infancy. Full penetration through American Bison in the 1700 to 2200 pound range is common.

The 444 is over shadowed by the Lever Action Marlin (and now Henry to some extent) rifle. The 45-70 will use bullet as light as 300 but can be used with bullets up to 550 and most Marlins feed fine just as they come. So the 444 is not going to dethrone the 45-70. But that is not to say the 444 is somehow a weakling.

That is parallel to saying a 308 is not capable of killing elk because the 375H&H is more powerful. Somehow the elk I and many others have killed with their lowly 308s are..............well...........still dead!

Thankee, I think I have many versions. I haven’t found a why to use anything else.

I played with the .444 for years and owned several. Funny how I never killed anything with them. I've bought some 250PT from Conley Precision, set up a Winchester Timber Carbine and gave it to a friend in MO. I had planned on meeting him there and going pig hunting, but never did. I found a full length magazine Winchester BB at a gun show and set it up with the 265 LM ammo. I also had a Merit adj. peep put on it. My SIL has it now, put away for my grand daughter. ( I have several different rifles I wanted her to have that she can either use or sell when a teenager.) I shot a bunch of Marlins and the Beartooth bullets.