Hi Bigrich, its a great calibre, my main gun is a 44 mag rossi as most of my shooting is 150 yards or less. I have owned 4 rossis, three 357 and the current 44. The 44 was the newest and a level up in fit, finish and action smoothness from the 3 older 357's. Below is my full blurb and thoughts behind getting a 44.
No experience with the other types personally but I did a lot of research at the time before I went to Rossi. Main reasons were the 92 is the strongest of the actions( though the Henry and Marlin are still plenty strong) and cheap. Marlin was having some quality issues at the time too. Comments regards which action type feeds the best and particularly which will feed wide bullets and the shorter special rounds( 44 special) will vary on every thread. One thread will have blokes favouring marlin, the next will say henry, or rossi, or winchester 1873's etc. basically its gun dependant but I can say is all my Rossis fed the shorter specials( 38 and 44 respectively) as well as full length ammo so out of 4 guns all were great feeders and thats a pretty good statistic. What I like about 44 is you can run subsonic pistol bullets which still have decent thump for quieter shooting all the way to full house loads. Subsonic loads can run off as low as 4-5 grains of powder. There are a couple of former cullers posting on different forums who did most of their shooting with a 44, including big game neck shooting brumbies, donks and bovines in large numbers with 44 mags.
People compare 44 to 30-30 for power, but with handloading the 44 mag is a decent margin more thump, in my opinion anyway. Another thing most people dont realise is some 44 bullets actually have similar ballistic coefficient to 30-30 pills. The 30-30 shoots flatter due to its higher starting velocity of course.
Regards bullet choice, some are fairly hard designs and at range they may not expand as well. Everything will flog pigs at reasonable ranges though, a 44 cal hole is big to start with .The best I have found are the Hornady XTP's. They both open up easily in the nose area but then penetrate well. The 180 and 200xtp will both expand subsonically, the 240xtp needs about 1100fps impact to expand, the 300 XTP is a much tougher bullet and needs 1250fps+ impact. The 300 grain nosler is softer and expands at around 1150fps. The lowest velocity expanding bullet is the speer gold dot 200 grain designed for short barrelled 44 special pistols. It will expand as low as 800fps. Great bullet for low noise shooting at close range out of a lever, I bodyshoot small/medium pigss over baits at night with this bullet under 40 yards at about 1000fps. The noise isnt much worse than a 22mag, they sometimes fall right over, sometimes run a short way and I find them in the morning. Also the barnes XPB in 200 grain expands just under the speed of sound.
Regards factory ammo I ran some tests and basically it went like this
Blazer was grossly underpowered., 1200fps in the carbine.
Federal Hydrashok, geco, PPU were all decent level, 1700fps or so from the carbine with 240 grain bullets
Magtech 240 grain had slightly more oomph on the chrony, closer to 1800fps but I havent tried them in game and heard they may be a tougher bullet.
The most powerful factory loads I have tried are the Hornady custom 200XTP. These chronied over 2000fps from the Rossi which is over 1700ftlbs.
Looking at the charts, if they are accurate enough you could zero your gun at 120 yards, they will only be 2" high at 75 and 4" low at 150. Velocity will still be 1400fps and expanding to 60-70cal. Roughly 44mag revolver power at the muzzle. Anyone claiming 44mag is a 100 yard trajectory gun needs to look at that load.
The most powerful handloads I have seen on the net push 1900fps with 240 grains or around 2000fltbs from a 92 action.
I also wear glasses, bad astigmatisms, so I mounted a red dot and shoot with that. My bubba-fied gun shown below. Bushnell red dot. Osram 1400lumen torch, remote tail switch and yes that is genuine black eleccy tape.