.44-40 and .444 Marlin?

[Plainsman]

Huh? Anybody try this?

One of the neat things I found out about the 444 rifles and carbines...is if you have 44-40 ammo, and the bullets are sized 428 or more, they will shoot with good accuracy out of the 444s. At the Shootist Holiday 1999...with Winchester 44-40 ammo my Win 444 B’ Shadow would put them into three inches at 100 yards. And they may sound like a wimp loads when you fire them...but the iron silhouettes told a different story...the pigs went down with authority at 100 yards and the full sized deer silhouette rang and shook accordingly at 150 yards. If your 44-40 ammo is sized .426 for the older 44-40s then the accuracy is pretty bad. But we found .428 shot really well.

The whole article is here:
http://www.leverguns.com/articles/paco/444.htm

[Four Fingers of Death]

I've got some factory jacketed ollow points that I want to get rid of. I'd probably be better pulling the boolits with the kinetic hammer and loading them in 444 cases as plinkers, wild dog loads (we have big problems here with dogs gone feral and also with them breeding with the natuve dog, the dingos.

[MakeMineA10mm]

Yep. I shoot .429" Round Ball gallery loads out of my 444 Marlin in 44-40 cases. Trouble is re-sizing them. I use 44-40 dies, but they turn out to be kind-of ugly cases, and the work-hardening shortens brass life.

I would NOT recommend full-power loads being shot this way, and I would caution against doing this too much, because it will leave a fouling ring in the chamber, causing sticky extraction of 444 rounds.

Lastly, I gave up on this because I couldn't get the 44-40 cased loads to feed through the magazine, even with longer bullets. My main interest was turning the 3/4-length 444 Magazine into something more than a 4-shooter...

[Lloyd Smale]

cant really see a use to do it. 4440 ammo is just as expensive to buy and even brass is just as expensive. Its also going to crud up your chamber if you shoot enough of it. Load your 444 brass with 9 grains of unique and a 240 and it will be just as tame to shoot. If your conserned about getting more shells in the gun id do some experimenting with cutting 444s shorter till you can get another one in it or swapping out your mag tube for a full length one. Send that 4440 brass to me and ill put it to better use.