Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Who still uses a Marlin or Winchester levergun as their primary deer rifle?

Been hunting with Marlin lever actions for 25 years or so. One day I was 25-30' up a pine tree in a thicket where I could only see about 35 yards. I looked down at my rifle and realized that I didn't have the right rifle for the job at hand. What I had in my lap was A Browning A-bolt Stainless Stalker in 25/06. It was loaded with my handloads that pushed a 90gr Sierra HPBT at 3400 fps. The wrong tool it was. By the time season opened the next year I had found a 1973 Marlin 336 in 35Remington to hunt the thick stuff. I finally realized that it would easily handle probably 90% of the shots I would make in the woods I hunt. There are several more Marlins in my safe now but the 35Rem. is the one that I grab the most. I know most people say that the Winchester model 94 is the classic American lever action deer rifle and it carries better than other leverguns. But I have shot scopes for almost all my hunting from my air rifle on. Marlin simply scopes better without having to carve out its receiver. For that reason I started out with Marlin and have never looked back. I've come to the point that the Marlins, whether scoped or not, look better than it's competitors too. But the greatest reason I have stayed with Marlins over other lever actions is the variety of calibers available. There is something that's just almost magic about a medium bore rifle pushing heavy bullets at ho-hum speeds. They really do seem to kill game far better than what the gun rags tell they should. To copy what gunwriters say, "They kill far out of proportion to their paper ballistics."

Goat