If you had an opportunity to buy only one of these: 336 308 Marlin or 307 win 94 fairly cheap, which would you chose?

Fairly cheap, Both!

Hornady seems to still make ammo for the 308 Marlin. The 307 could be a problem. I have heard of the 307 and 356 Winchester being fed hand loads using regular .308 brass. I would go with whatever you can get brass for.

I'd take the 307 just because I had the 356 and 375 but always wanted the 307

I’d prefer the Marlin, but I’d have the chamber reamed out with a 308W reamer and just run rimless brass and use 307 load data.

I would take the Marlin because I have a bunch of factory ammo, brass and bullets.

I have both.
I prefer the .307.
The .307 is obsolete, you can still manage it but the .308 Marlin is more current."

My 22" .308ME is an exceptional tubular magazine lever action rifle. Marlin took extra care assembling it. The sliding bolt and vertical bolt are well fitted to each other. The forend has two nylon rub straps under the forearm which has some built in clearance.
The Hornady factory ammunition is very good quality. The Handloader has to work hard to equal the accuracy of the Hornady ammunition.

The Marlin rifle will not accept the high pressure of .307 Winchester ammunition. The .308 Marlin develops its velocity through barrel length.
The .307 Winchester with factory 150 grain loads would just top 2,560 fps with the early ammunition and was then backed of 100 fps or a bit more in later ammunition.
The .308 Marlin with the 160 grain factory load will just break 2,600 fps with the 22" barrel.
With handloads both cartridges are good for 2,550 fps+ with 150 grain bullets.
With the 170 grain bullets both cartridges will break 2,500 fps easily.

Alliant Reloder 15 and Hodgdon Varget are good powders to start with.
The .307 Winchester is a bit better balanced as far as case capacity and maximum pressure. This is due to deeper bullet seating to maintain the COL between 2.55 to 2.60".

It is rather easy to load the .308 Marlin Express to to high pressure. I found this when the cartridge came out and there was no published load data. When Hornady finally came out with a fax sheet of pressure tested load data I had to reduce some of my loads.

Anyway, I would purchase the .308ME, sit down at the bench and say: "Watch This."

Regan Nonneman rechambered 2 Marlin 336s for me, a 336 SC from 30-30 to 307 and a 336 SD from 35 to 356. Both work fine. Nonneman told me that the Marlin 336 ERs that were factory made in 356 used regular production 336 receivers, no special heat treating or physical strengthening. The 336 ERs were spectacularly unsuccessful, so have become collectables and Winchester seldom runs loads of factory ammo in either 307 or 356, so they are virtual orphans if you don't reload. Exercising 20/20 hindsight, I wish that I hadn't had the work done, particularly to the 336 SD that I bought in as new in the box condition.

Both work fine with ammo loaded to published pressures using 308 brass.

260R

Does the 308 brass extract well in your Marlins.

Bugger

The ability of the Marlin rifle to handle higher pressure loads has to do with it lock up.
On the Beartooth Shooters forum there are many threads on the .307 Winchester.
Seatlerdwr was one of several who had Marlin rifles rechambered for the .307 Winchester cartridge. The results were pretty uniform that the Matlin rifle would begin to exhibit sticky extraction about 150 fps short of the highest velocity loads in the Winchester rifles. This is not intended to disparage the Marlin, simp,y to report what we saw. Mr. Nonnuman converted Seatlerdwr rifles.
Seatlerdwr worked with Mr. Nonneman and developed a wildcat he named the. 30 Lever Maximum. This is a shortened .307/.308 Winchester with a slight Improved form. This rifle cartridge combination will handle the highest pressure loads with no indication of sticky extraction.
https://www.shootersforum.com/threads/the-30-lever-maximum.69457/#post-539992

Mr. Nonneman is a real pro and developed a rather exiting rifle cartridge combination.

In most Marlin rifles the extractor will extract the fired cartridge satisfactorly but in sometimes will not hold
the empty long enough to eject it.
Most of the Marlins will handle rimlesscartridges through the magazine without difficulty. A few rifle will require work on the cartridge stop.
My 308MX will handle two rimless cartridges in the magazine but a third will cause the cartridge to jump the stop and tie up the action.
My Winchester .307 will handle one rimless cartridge in the magazine with a second cartridge compressing the magazine spring enough to cause the cartridge to jump the stop and tie up the rifle.

I have formed307 Winchester and .308 Mar.in Express cases from .444 Marlin,. 30-06 and .270 Winchester cases. They all work fine with some requiring inside neck reaming.

https://www.shootersforum.com/threads/308-marlin-express-brass.39328/page-2#post-284872

I would go with the 308 Marlin. Easier to find components and I just prefer the Marlin guns.
Easiest route would be a Savage 99 or BLR in 308 Win. I had the Savage 99. Currently have a BLR Lightweight in 358 Win and find it becoming my favorite.
No bad choice. Just your preference.

It’s interesting no one has mentioned the 338 mx?

I have a 356 ER and a 308 mx and a 356 94 AE

I like them all.

The OP was a decision between the 307 Win and the 308 ME.

If he wants a recommendation the .30 WWG should be right in the mix...

Where's the smiley faces???

Sorry I misread confusing 336 with 338


A 300 savage is close also no?

A 300 Savage is right in the mix.
If we study the .300 Savage a bit we can come up with a Lot of conflicting data. Of course there are several generations of rifles floating around in .300 Savage.

I was just kidding around. I really need to learn how to add a smiley face...

I have a Marlin rechambered by Nonneman in 307. The Marlin will also cycle 308 brass loaded to 307 specs. My favorite load given to me by Slim is 40.0 grs of 4064 under a 170 gr Speer hot cor. This combination is deadly on our NYS whitetail. Another option is a 30 30 AI.

Sadly I think Nonneman no longer does gunsmithing as his website does not exist anymore.

The 170 grain Speer bullet driven about 2,350 fps just seems to be ideal for our average size Whitetail (160lb is a big one)  and our smaller pigs. The Speer bullet has good expansion, weight retention and penetration. I expect deer hit under 100 yards to drop in their tracks with a cross body shot.
At this velocity the rifles have light recoil and are easy to shoot from field positions.

The Speer bullet and IMR 4064 are a good combination in the .307 Winchester. Not the highest velocity but excellent performance on game inside 100 yards. It is still my go to load.

I should have put a picture like this up on the close up rifle.

She hunts close.

I had a 336 30/30 rechambered by JES reboreing
I used some 308 Brass .. as others mentioned. Didn’t eject like the 307 …. I loaded up some 130gr Speer …
And 150 gr Federal PS .. this was before the 308ME
But Imagine using the Hornady LVR powder you could work up some loads …
I also owned a 356Win and a 375 win
Id like have seen Winchester follow through with the
400 Winchester.. I do believe that one would have been the most popular.. now the Winchester has the 400 L