I killed my first deer with a 30/30 as have all three of my sons.While there certainly are better cartridges available the question was 44 mag or 30/30.In that case I would say 30/30.I have killed a lot of deer with the 30/30 in years past and never had problems recovering deer.Most of my shots were inside of 100yds.A 150 grain bullet at 2400 fps is pretty close to 308 ballistics and at less than a 100 yds you won't see much difference.Most of my woods hunting is done with a model 7 308 and honestly I have not seen any difference in terminal performance at close ranges.The Marlin 336 I have is also very accurate at 100 yds with factory corelockt bullets.

CB