It REALLY REALLY REALLY pains me to say this, but I don' t care for the Ruger lever guns, they' re just TOO ugly! (I love Ruger, their arms are almost the only rifles and hanguns I shoot anymore, but not their lever actions!!!!) They' re accurate as need be, and probably as much so as any, so don' t think that you' re settling on a sub-par arm.

As for the .44mag as a round, I hope you reload, because unless you want to buy high powered rounds for $35 a 50-box, you won' t get the full potential out of that gun. Factory loads are fine for deer, don' t mistake that, but they are fairly light for rifles, the advantages of higher powered rounds is pretty great. I typically shoot .44mag in a Marlin 1894 or a Ruger Superblackhawk, both handle very hot loads and I trust both to take deer out to 150yrds (75yrds max on the handgun, no glass on it and factory sights) Load all lead bullets in your rifle and watch what they can do, there' s something about cast bullets that sure knocks the tar out of em. I used an old Ruger deerfield carbine years back that was a real power hitter, I' d imagine that it should shoot very similarly to your levergun. I almost ALWAYS use cast or swaged lead bullets, they give the best results in my opinion, with jacketed bullets you get irregular expansion or none at all, varying per shot. I' ve had batches of lead bullets that I water tested give less than 2% variance average in expanded diameter, and the three slugs I pulled from deer (or the dirt beyond) that year were within this range as well. Not too bad in my eyes.

In my opinion, in handgun/carbiner cartridges, the .44mag is the .30-06 equivalent, some might consider it light for the biggest of game, but I beg to differ, experience has taught me well.

For example, my dad used to use his .44mag 1894 Marlin for putting down sick buffalo on my great-grandpa' s farm, you don' t really want to get close to a sick buffalo, because they can do a WHOLE LOT of damage to you and your horse, so he' d set up with hot loads at 75-100yrds (bison can almost out sprint a horse and for three times farther at least, let alone when he' s mounted), my uncle would tell him every time ta move around behind him and try to catch him behind the ear, " na, na, just never you mind," as he' d plug on into it' s forehead, and in all the times I saw that happen, I only saw one need a second helping and they never had one get close to them after the shot either (obviously these weren' t Cast slugs, or softpoints, but I don' t know what they were for sure, " Wild Bill" the neighbor was loading them for him).

As for factory ammo, I' d go for Winchester Super-X 240gr (or is it 230--->too lazy to go check the boxes right now, sorry) semi-jacketed softpoints, they hit like trucks and don' t on your pocketbook ($15 for 50). I used them this year in my 1894marlin, dropped a deer like a sack of potatoes at 123yrds.