I recently scratched my itch for a new pig rig with a Marlin 1894 in 44 Mag.
I decided on 44 Mag because out to 100 yards, it has more than enough power to drop anything I'd be shooting at (my eyes don't work with open sights past that range, so a 30-30 wasn't any benefit). I added the Ashley Peep sight (more on this down below) and spent some time smoothing up the action as shown
here.
Since I reload, ammo cost wasn't a consideration, but you may want to think about that.
Buying in 44 Mag also gave me a good excuse to get that Redhawk side arm I've been eyeing...
44 Mag generally has more energy at 100 yards than the 357 has at the muzzle. You'll want at least 1000ft-lbs of energy to cleanly kill a piggy: 357 is good at contact range and that's about it.
I've finally got the Ashley Peep Sights on my '94 modified to the point where I'm happy with it.
First thing I did was replace the front sight with a Williams Firesight insert that fit in the stock sight ramp (.405 high, narrow model). Big improvement, but I was still not happy with the huge rear rings. Sure, they're great for fast targeting of large objects up close, but not ideal for any measure of repeatable accuracy.
At first, I was planning on soldering some brass or aluminum tubing "donuts" into the small rear sight to narrow the hole. Then I remembered a friend telling me he uses a .050" aperture on his receiver sight for target work and a .090" for hunting, so that wouldn't give me the very small aperture I wanted.
After some thought, I mixed up a small batch of Brownell's bedding compound (epoxy) with the black tint and filled the large rear sight hole. When hardened, I filed and sanded it flat and smooth, and then carefully drilled a very small (1/16") hole in the center. Lightly chamfering the edges of the hole and then burnishing away any roughness with a wire cleaned up the sight picture. If you don't have any black epoxy, use what you have and blacken it with a Sharpie permanent marker.
Tried it the other morning and it works like a charm, targeting is actually faster now because I don't spend as much time centering the sight in the ring, just place the front dot on the target and squeeze...
