I'm looking into purchasing a 44 mag rifle for tree stand deer hunting in PA. I like the idea of the Ruger bolt action with a rotery clip. My question is, what rifle between the Marlin 1894SS with 1:34 twist rate, or the Ruger with a 1:20 twist rate will give the best accuracy for the heavy bullets? Thanks in advance for any thoughts...

Latts

Good question. Maybe this search can help. Let us know what you figure out.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&c...ag&spell=1

The 1:38 twist of the Marlin wont stabilize the heavier, say 265,300 grain and up bullets AS WELL AS the 1:20 of the Ruger bolt gun.This is not to say that you can't shoot the heavier bullets in the Marlinwith some sort of comfort as to accuracy.
The Marlin is twisted for the 240 grain bulletprimarily.
If it were I, I should like to shoot the heavier bullets out of the Ruger.

I really like the Marlin lever gun with the octogon barrel in 45 LC. The +P loads slightly outperform the 44mag loads and Double Tap Ammo offerloads up to 335 Grains. For me there is something nostalgic about the lever gun in 45 LC. Also the 1:16 twist will stablize anything you want to shoot.

I don't understand why you need bullets heavier than 240 gr for deer hunting in the 1st place? my old Ruger semiauto .44 has killed many deer at close range (not all by me) with "standard" 240 gr jacketed bullet loads.

You are certainly correct 240+ grain bullets are not needed for deer.

By all means, get the 1/20" twist if you are going to shoot heavy bullets!

But the original lever guns were not made in 45 COLT! The rim was too small for positive extraction!

I had always thought the cowboys used 45 LC in both their revolvers and lever guns. Do you know if the modern lever guns (marlin in particular) have feeding problems with the 45 LC or have they found an engineeredsolution to thesmaller rim? I have been keeping my open for a good buy on this combo and may need to rethink this.

The 44/40,38/40, and 32/20 werethose rounds that the cowboys used in both revolvers and lever action rifles. If they had a .45 COLT revolver, there was no lever rifle in that caliber back then. The extraction problems were due mainly to using black powder. Look at how small the rim is on one of those cases.