Given a reliable design and properly constructed rifle (there are clunkers in both categories)and kept clean and used with proper ammunition, I think it's pretty close. I came late to the bolt game, grew up around the Savage, Winchester, and Marlin levers. All my older relatives had them and I used levers too. But I've been a bolt shooter now for about 15 years, and would have to say that in the case of a cartridge that is insufficiently sized or dirty, or a rifle that got dumped in the dirt or mud, the bolt gun wins, assuming it has an easily field-stripped bolt. Unless it was the hunt of a lifetime, away from civilization, though, I wouldn't be afraid to take an old Savage 99 and go on a hunt. And I remember reading either Dave Scovill or Brian Pearce about the old sheepherder who occasionally poured diesel fuel from the ranch tank through his M 94 and kept on shooting.
Last edited by 300_savage; 11/23/14.
