I can only report on what I see, and I what I see at the range and in gun racks are bolt action rifles from REM/RUG/SAV, lever action rifles from HEN/MAR, and semi-auto ARs.
New England really isn't representative of America in almost any way, being far more tradition-bound than the rest of the country. Here in Montana, 6.5 Creedmoor's are nearly everywhere these days.
I see about the same distribution of bolt action rifles in the REM/RUG/SAV where I live, in Omaha, NE, where I travel to manage property, in Colorado, Nebraska, and South Dakota, and most places that I visit.
A lot of the breakthroughs in the shooting sports took place in New England, New York, and Pennsylvania despite people there being tradition bound. I would respectfully suggest that while what happens in Montana is fully representative of Montana, it is unlikely to be representative of the rest of America because the population is very small, approximately 1,000,000 people, and it is much more rural and less densely populated than much of the rest of the U.S.
