I'll be happy to give you a dissenting opinion. I bought an 1894C the beginning of 2009 after reading rave reviews of the gun on this site. I thought this should be a neat little gun and since I have a 357 mag revolver, this should be the perfect match. So I bought it brand new, paying more than I thought I should for such a little gun.
I started shooting it with the factory open sights and quickly discovered that they didn't work with my vision at all. So I wanted to keep it non-scoped, and I bought a skinner sight for it. That worked better but my eyes still wouldn't allow me precision shooting out to 50 yards, so I finally settled on a 1.5 - 4.5 power Bushnell scope.
I also noticed that the dimensions of the gun just didn't fit me correctly. It seemed like a gun you should give a youngster just starting to shoot. The straight stock didn't fit me correctly, the squared off lever was too small for my hands, and the stubby 18.5" barrel just didn't get it either.
The there was shooting it at the range. Since I reload the 357, I had plenty of ammo to shoot, but unlike my 357 revolver, I had to chase the empties around the floor of the range. I'd shoot a mag of 9 rounds and spend more time trying to gather my empties than actually shooting. And I lost quite a few pieces of brass. Then I found that it really wasn't any more fun shooting this gun than it was shooting my 39A, as a matter of fact I enjoyed the 39A more not having to chase empties.
Then there was the idea of using it for hunting. Just didn't seem to fit any niche there. It was too big for small game, and too small for big game. I did take it deer hunting on 2009, but passed on 2 does because I didn't feel I had enough gun to shoot them at the distances I encountered them. I ended up taking out the 35 Remington and killing a deer. I know people shoot deer with them all the time, but it didn't seem like a cartridge I wanted to use on whitetails.
I might have enjoyed the 44 mag 1894 better, since it's a little larger, and has a more powerful cartridge, but most of the other cons would have been the same, so that's doubtful. I suppose these guns have their place for particular types of shooting, but they weren't types that I'm involved in. So for me it was a waste of money. I sold it less than a year after I bought it, and luckily I made $50 on the transaction so I didn't feel so bad.