deerhunter 1981: the 444 is one of my most favorite cartridges. I found that both my Traditional Rifle and the Black Shadow came with Marlin's Microgroove barrels. The Traditional Rifle was sent for re-barrel and is an incredible tack driver with heavy (300, 330 and 335 gn ) Beartooth Bullet slugs and load data.
If you do not reload please consider taking it up. The 444 will perform incredibly well with heavy cast slugs, and the use of heavy slugs in that caliber makes the 444 a big game hunter's dream. If you do not reload, the 444 is still an excellent round and can be had in 240, 265, possibly 270 and 300 gn loadings from some of the custom ammo makers.
Please be aware though that if yours wears a Microgroove barrel and has not been shot much you may wish to consider the bore lapping process advocated by Beartooth Bullets. It is the same process spoken to by Veral Smith, one of the Graybeard Moderators and a well known bullet mould maker. In fact, I believe the Beartooth literature refers to Veral Smith numerous times. Microgroove barrels shoot fine with jacketed bullets but need 'enhancement' to perform the same or better with cast slugs.
I found that once my barrels were slugged to determine actual bore diameter and then lapped (as per instructions) they shot better than many bolt rifles I have owned. My long tube Montana Rifleman re-barrel prints under 1" at 100 yds with all the slugs mentioned above. The former Black Shadow is just as good.
I don't really feel the Remington ammo is not good, I just don't like the fact that some of it seats more deeply after only one or two chamberings. Both your rifle and mine may yet require a bit more work to enhance smoother chambering but to be honest, what we have is a fat, straight walled cartridge with a flatter nose than the bottlenecked rounds, and bumping the nose against the barrel mouth when chambering and causing some minor bullet set-back but this doesn't seem to hurt anything. HTH. Mikey.
