"The max brass is a lot harder to come by than mag brass."
I should have put it a different way. Mag brass is free. All I have to do is go to the local range, wild life management area, and pick it up. I also got four maxwell house coffe cans of 357 mag brass in a recent trade. I have some max brass on order from a local shop for a little less than $8 per fifty.
I have been looking around some of the reloading forums and some rifle forums scouring for load data. I found several posted reports on velocity from mag lever actions with 16 and 20 inch barrels. However, the only max data I could find was from either revolvers or contenders with 10-14 inch barrels. Anyway, long story short, without hard chrono data specific to our NEF's, the numbers didn't look all that different. I couldn't find anything but guesses as to max velosities from the longer barrels. The thought was starting to creep into my head that, if I loaded my mag brass right, the max would be redundant. I know, sometimes I get the strangest ideas. However, JHP45's velocities are better than I had hoped. So I guess I'll give the max a go.