My luck with 44 Magnum leverguns has not been good until recent years. I had 2 MG Marlin 94s--one in the mid 1980s and another in the late 1990s. I was not a refined cast bullet guy in those days, but I found the wide groove diameters in S&W revolvers and Marlin rifles to be an annoyance--so they didn't last long because they wouldn't shoot for ^&$#.
C. 2010 I found a NIB Miroku/Winchester 1892 in 44 Magnum, and it has been a delight. It digests my .431" castings that my Ruger handbeasts dote on, and shoots then all with good levergun accuracy--1.1"-1.2" or so at 50 yards, and under 3" at 100 yards.
The 44 Magnum is a very capable rifle caliber if its platform can shoot consistently. A 240-250 grain bullet running in the 1800 FPS ballpark is no joke. In a 6# carbine the recoil from such loads is no joke either. It might not be noticed if a 4 x 4 muley was in the sights when the primer functions, but less interesting targets like paper and iron don't off that same distraction. For me--full house 44 Magnum loads in revolvers or rifles are a thing endured......not necessarily enjoyed. The Lights Came On one day in the El Paso Mountains around Ridgecrest. I had some variants of "Skeeter's Load" cooked up with 9.0 grains of Herco in 44 Mag cases capped by a 250 grain FNGC. I held on a jackrabbit about 60 yards away and let drive. Mild recoil + cartwheeled jack. I loaded 5 more of those rounds and tried the recoil without distraction--enjoyable, instead of endurable. Later clocking showed them running 1175-1200 FPS. These Skeeter's=level loads now make up 90% of my 44 Mag shooting.
The Moral Of The Story--the 44 Special and 44/40 WCF taught me the truth of the matter--Diameter does the work, not velocity. All of our predictive terminal ballistics calculations use a squared element to arrive at their conclusions--bullet weight, bullet velocity, or bullet diameter. Only Hatcher IRSP uses an element that squares itself in Nature empirically (diameter) AND utilizes mass instead of dead weight as a constant. My grandparents kept themselves well-fed during the darkest years of the Depression with a 44/40 WCF carbine and its 200 grain flatnose running 1150 FPS. Grandma dropped two black bears that tried their garden plot and a pie cooling on a window shelf. Even in the early 1930s, life in Sawpit Canyon was a challenge--and bears are still to this day the 'Shaggy freebooters' that John Muir described in his writings.
Why would you expect the Rossi to shoot better than the Marlin? Both prefer fat bullets, based on my experience with a 357 Rossi carbine.
