I picked up a Marlin lever 44 mag a couple years ago. So far I haven' t been impressed with the performance. I tried the winchester semi-jacketed flat points and then the remington premier core lokts(fancy hollow points). The deer went down just not real fast at all. This year I am going to roll my own. I' m going to try either the Hornady XTP or the speer gold dots. I agree that these little lever actions are just too fun of a gun to not try and get them to work.