I have been looking at a friends marlin 1894 with a William's peep-sight. I was thinking of getting the rifle for hunting the Adirondack woods were 100 yds is a REAL long shot. I would mostly be shooting at whitetails, wieghing not much more than 220 lbs at the largest. Occasionally, I would take a shot at a black bear. They don't get too big, 400 lbs is rare, 200 lbs the norm. Anyway, I was wondering what would be a good factory load to shoot. I would probably shoot Hornady loads. What would be better, the 240 grn or the 300 grn load? What about Winchester's loads? Anyone here used the 44 Mag in a lever gun for whitetails?

I have seen many big Adirondack and Maine bucks and 300+ lbs boar bear taken with the 240 grainers in the Ruger .44 Mag Carbine. For the conditions you have described you need not hesitate in selecting the .44 Mag.
By the way, never was a second shot taken.

Hey Joe, You have an opportunity to get an excellent, and often overlooked, woods cartridge/rifle combo. I've killed many of our smaller Southeastern Deer with a 44Mag.

My last one was a 21" Contender Carbine and it did fine on our Deer with 240gr Hornady XTPs that I reloaded for it. Since you mentioned you might use this bullet, I can tell you it will work. Most of the time it was a drop-in-the-tracks situation.

However, I didn't get "Exits". That fine XTP would always mushroom just like an ad bullet and generally be caught by the off-side hide. Where I hunt, an Exit is a great advantage due to the heavy understory. I'd decided to go to either a non-hollow point, or to a heavier bullet. I'd bought some Hard Cast 240gr Gas-Checked Lead bullets and some 300gr Sierras to try in it. Ended up trading it off to a guy who knew it's reputation before I could use them on any Game.

Finding a non-hollow point might be difficult to do in a factory cartridge, but I don't know for sure. So, the 240gr XTPs will work and the 300gr XTPs might just have enough "oomph" to get an Exit for you.

One other factory cartridge you might want to consider is the 270gr Speer Gold Dot. It is a hollow point style too, but has a Plated-On jacket. You will not get any core separation with it either.

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Good hunting and clean 1-shot kills, Hot Core