Handloading The .444 Marlin

Guns Magazine, Jan, 2001 by John Taffin

With the right components and data, this 37-year-old cartridge becomes one of the most versatile levergun rounds available today.

Rarely is there a cartridge able to overcome wrong configurations by both the rifle and ammunition manufacturer and manage to survive, and the fact that the .444 Marlin still exists is a grand testimonial to its excellence. The .444 Marlin is about as useful a close-range, hard-hittin', easy-handlin' levergun and cartridge combination as a man could possibly conceive for anything short of the big bears and Africa's toughest. With a heavy, tough jacketed bullet in a short lightweight levergun, it is near perfection.

Introduced in 1964, the original .444 Marlin rifle was a 24" barreled levergun with a two-thirds magazine, a straight-gripped stock and a Monte Carlo cheek piece. The cartridge was a glorified .44 magnum loading with the same 240 gr. bullet that the sixgun round utilized. The rifle was wrong and so was the ammunition.

A 24" barrel belongs on a long-range rifle, while the bullet loaded was not good for anything much larger than deer. Remington gave us a glimmer of hope with the use of a tougher 265 gr. bullet, but it was only recently that Marlin, with its Outfitter, brought forth an 18 1/2" barreled, easier-handling up-close levergun.

The 265 gr. Remington load is gone, but several heavier bulleted loads from Buffalo Bore and Cor-Bon have replaced it. The latter has both a 280 and 305 gr. load, while Buffalo Bore offers ammunition loaded with 270, 300 and 325 gr. bullets. All of these loads are designed for tough use on tough critters.

Marlin's Distinctive Cartridge

The .444 Marlin, at a length of 2.225", is not an elongated .44 Mag. as some may think. It is a slightly tapered case going from .470" at the base to .453" at the case mouth, while the 1.285" long .44 Mag. is a straight case of .456" diameter.

In addition to the Outfitter, Marlin still offers their basic levergun though it now features a 22" instead of a 24" barrel. Even Winchester has now climbed on the .444 bandwagon with both an 18" Timber Carbine on the Big Bore platform and a 20" Black Shadow Big Bore with a black synthetic stock.

The straight-walled .444 Marlin case requires a three-die set for reloading. The case is tapered enough that carbide dies are not available for its reloading. We have been well served by RCBS .444 Marlin dies for two decades. This three-die set consists of a full-length re-sizing die with built-in de-capper, an expander die and a seating/crimping die.

Everything utilized to load the .444 Marlin is available in RCBS green. The primers are seated with the RCBS hand-priming tool, powder is dropped from an RCBS Uniflow powder measure which is set with the RCBS Electronic scale.

The Uniflow Powder Measure does not see a lot of variation when it comes to powders and the .444 Marlin. In fact, our reloading chores are handled quite well with only three powders: H322 and H4895 from Hodgdon's and Alliant's Reloader 7. It is almost a certainty that these powders are ignited with CCI's #200 large Rifle Primer.

The .444 Today -- Alive And Well

Unlike the mid-'60s when the .444 Marlin was introduced, we now have excellent .44 bullet choices in both heavyweight cast and jacketed style. The 300 gr. bullets designed for the .44 Mag., that work so well in sixguns, are even better in the .444 Marlin, but there are tradeoffs. When reloading for the .444 Marlin, overall length must be closely watched and most bullets will need to be seated deep and crimped over the shoulder in the case of cast bullets.

Bullets designed for sixgun use in such long-cylindered .44 Mags. as Ruger's Redhawk and Super Redhawk normally protrude too far from the .444 Marlin case to work through the action when crimped in the crimping groove. We always make up a dummy cartridge first to check all loads for positive feeding through the Marlin action. Even jacketed bullets may be too long if the crimping groove is used.

Also, the older .444 rifles will accept rounds that newer guns will not. The problem is not in feeding or overall length, but that the wider bullets will not allow the cartridge to make the turn as it is inserted into the loading gate. Check all rounds with dummy cartridges worked through the loading gate and action before loading up several boxes.

More Than Just A .44

We did not approach the .444 Marlin with the idea of somehow coming up with a ".44 Mag. Swift." Trying to see how fast we could drive a 240 gr. .44 Mag. bullet did not even enter the picture. Instead we wanted the .444 to do with heavyweight bullets what the .44 Mag. could do with standard weight .44 bullets -- perhaps even a little more. To this end, we do not recall ever loading any bullets less than 265 grs. in the .444 Marlin.

The first .444 Marlin ammunition from Remington used the same 240 gr. bullet as the .44 Mag., and the .444 really only came even remotely close to big-game rifle cartridge performance with the introduction of Hornady's 265 gr. jacketed flat-nosed bullet.