My wife and I shoot three different Marlins. She has a 1894C that shoots just about any jacketed bullet well although it doesn't seem to like the OT 158 cast that I have tried on it. I have 'big Bertha" my 1895 45/70 that also is a great gun. My only problem with it was that before deer season I loaded some Rem 300 HP at Marlin level and sighted the gun in at 100 yards. As it would have it the deer showed up at 50 yards and I got excited and forgot to compensate and ended up putting the 300 grainers right throw the top of the spine and the back strap. It is not pretty what that bullet will do to a deer at over 2000 fps. I realize that I don't need to sight in at 100 yards where I shoot and about 1400 fps would kill the deer just as well and would be a lot more fun to target shoot with. I shot up about fifteen of my Marlin loads before my shoulder said enough last Sunday. I guess I am just a wimp as the gun had a Shooter's friend recoil pad on the gun and I was also wearing a strap on pad. The 1895 is not a light weight gun but I don't find the Marlin loads pleasant to shoot. Other than that I have no problems with that gun either. Then there is my problem child, my 1894 .44 mag. It came right out of the box with a Marlin Jam. I got that fixed and had a limbsaver pad put on it. Another problem is that this gun is VERY picky about what it wants to shoot well. It doesn't like OT cast in either 180 or 240 grs. It doesn't like the 240 SP that my Deerfield will shoot in a ragged hole at 50 yards. It really shoots Hornady XTPs with a full load of H110 well and doesn't do a bad job on 240 gr XTPs. 300XTP are all over the place. At least I have two loads that it will shoot well. My other problem is that the screws in it work loose and when they do it starts to jam. Can you use some sort of thread lock on these and which one and do you just put it on top of the screw or actually on the threads and what happens later if you need to take one of these screws out?
RJ
