Hello Indyshooter,
I have an 1894 pre safety Marlin chambered in .44 Magnum. I've used it to take a couple deer over the past few years, and it works just fine. The deer I've taken have all been at under 50 yards and have been one shot kills. I shoot handloaded Hornady 240 grain XTP bullets through my 1894. My particular Marlin seems to have an oversized bore, and is not as accurate as I'd like it to be. It has Marlin's Micro Groove rifling, which doesn't impress me at all. I have to load .431 bullets to keep it on a pie plate at 100 yards. As such, I've relegated it to a 100 yard and in deer rifle. Doesn't really bother me since hunting from tree stands in Indiana is a short range proposition anyway. I mounted a red dot site on mine and it works great. I also hunted for many years with a .44 magnum handgun. It too was a hammer on deer using 250 grain Winchester Partition Gold HP's. I always kept my shots to no more than bow range.
As for the shiney stainless argument? I have a hunting buddy that bought a Remington LVSF in .22-250 a few years ago. We'd never had problems calling coyotes until he started flashing that rifle around, we came into a long dry spell. I was looking at him from across a field one day and realized that his rifle looked like a lit up bill board. He camoed it and we've killed a few more coyotes since. On another occasion I was hunting with my Remington 700 SPS stainless, which has a bead blasted stainless barrel. I'd had a coyote step out at just over 200 yards across a beanfield. I was sitting in the sun, and got a bit careless as I brought the rifle up on the coyote. Just as I picked him up in my scope he darted into the brush. He'd no doubt seem my movement with the sun shining on that stainless rifle. Since then I put camo tape on all my stainless barrels. Polished or bead blasted.
