Winchester 92 44-40

[HGunner]

I am interested in deer hunting with my original Win 92 in 44-40.  It is in very good working condition with slight bore roughness (good, well defined rifling).  I have found it to be very accurate with Black Hills cowboy ammo. I slugged the bore and measured the groove diameter at .429.  I would like to load jacketed 200 grain bullets.  I have Speer 210 grain Gold dots that mic .430 and 200 grain XTPs that mic .430.  I can get Win 200 jsp that measure .427 and Nosler 200 jsp that measure .429  What jacketed bullet size is optimal for this groove diameter?  Which of these would you recommend?  If you have a safe hunting load you'd like to share that would be great!

[Blackhawk44]

A good many original Winchester '92s have chambers tight enough that they won't chamber rounds with .429" diameter bullets.  All of my .44's (WCF) have done wonderfully with .427" jacketed and .427-428" cast loads.  Were I you, I'd use the Winchester bullets as they were designed exactly for the .44's velocity range.
 
Don't discount cast bullets too quickly.  The field performance between cast and jacketed is almost indistinquishable.  I like the Magma 215gr SWC (sold by the majority of cast bullet sellers) sized to .427" as an all around bullet.  Loaded with 8.5gr of Unique, its a great "standard" load.  Regarding adding velocity, the field performance difference between a load at 1250fps and one at 1500fps is nil.  Between its sights and trajectory, the .44 remains a 75-80 yard load, period.  Within those parameters, its a fine deer killer.