The lever-action is the all- American rifle, born here and refined here. For all those many years that American hunters have been carrying lever-action, tubular magazine rifles, they were called brush guns or brush busters because they were typically chambered for cartridges which fired large, relatively slowmoving bullets. Many, probably most, hunters were, and many still are, under the false notion that these bullets are better in the brush than lighter, faster bullets.

Also, hunters like to carry leveractions because of the factual notion that they are faster-handling than bolt-action rifles. A large part of the affection hunters feel for lever-action rifles is the way they handle, the way they feel in the hands.

With the relatively recent introduction of the Marlin MXLR rifle and the .338 Marlin Express cartridge, a joint project by Marlin and Hornady, the all-American lever-action rifle has immediately become much more versatile. In production of this new rifle-cartridge combination, it has been compared to the .30-06 Springfield because of similar trajectory and bullet energy. But in fact this is not quite the right comparison. In fact, there is no comparison. The lever-action .338 Marlin Express is a new experience. It is a lever-action rifle capable of hunting the largest American game at long distances, 300 yards and even beyond. Upon receiving the rifle, my first task was to mount a scope, an Alpen Apex 3X-9X, then head to the shooting range to zero the scope.

Fortunately, the weather was adequate, because I had just one day before leaving with the rifle for a black bear hunt in Maine. For this hunt, I zeroed the scope at 100 yards. Later, after the hunt when I could do further testing more leisurely, I would zero it at 200 yards. Factory ammunition from Hornady is available with only one bullet, the 200-grain FTX, one of their Leverevolution line. No longer news, this Leverevolution line of bullets have soft points, allowing bullets which are much more efficient than the blunt-nose bullets that formerly had to be used in tubular magazines. This has allowed truly revolutionary improvements in lever-action rifles. Whether or not other bullet weights will be available is questionable since the 200-grain bullet is the perfect weight. Heavier bullets might seem desirable for large game; however, larger bullets would have to be seated so deep that powder capacity would be significantly reduced. What we have in this factory load is the perfect load. Only, perhaps, bullets of different construction might be desirable, perhaps a thinner jacket for deer. That remains to be seen as far as I am concerned.

Why is comparison with the .30-06 not a proper one? For the past several decades, hunters have been overwhelmed by the importance of bullet energy, the supposition being that a smaller bullet with more energy is better than a larger bullet with less energy. Of course, there is a lot of truth in this line of thinking, but in my opinion, the issue is not so cut and dried as a simple comparison between energy.

All other things being equal, a heavier bullet is more lethal than a lighter bullet. All other things being equal, a larger entrance hole increases lethality. In both cases, the term lethal includes the time factor; how quickly the bullet does its job.

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