The lever is still quite popular for bear locally here, with the .444 being a very desireable caliber by houndsmen for its combination of close range power and tendency of bullets to stay inside the bruin.

I used to have more; .30-30's, .44's, .348's and .45-70's. Now only have a Winchester .44 Trapper we use almost exclusively for stock shooting and a .45-70 Marlin {first year of Ballard rifling} I have used on deer, bear and a couple range cattle.

Point of historical interest...the Savage 99 in .300 used to be an issue weapon for Idaho State Patrol. Was for many years though they are gone from that service now. Truth is, such a rifle would be hard to beat for an ISP officer even now in my opinion. Our local Sheriff's Deputies are issued old Army and National guard hand-me-down M16A1's and they too would be better off for most purposes with a scoped Savage, I think. Their M16's are beat up.

We had something of a shootout here at the place a few years ago, with a pack of wild stray dogs attacking my sheep and me not home to do diddly about it, being with my son about a mile away on another part of the ranch shooting ground squrrels. Now stray stock-chasing dogs are not uncommon here and I have shot quite a few myself, but these were not normal.

My wife went after the dogs with a Smith Model 640, missed one and figured with that they'd split as they do normally even if they see a person approach. They didn't, and in fact circled her and then commenced attacking the sheep again until my dogs picked a couple and rolled them. My then-little daughter called the Sheriff who sent two Deputies out and after they arrived they opened up with their M16's. My son and I heard the shots from a ways off and wondered "What gives?" but as shooting is quite common in these parts went back to our own shooting.

When we got home we found the Deputies had killed one of the pack and wounded another. I reckon they'd have killed more had they been shooting the oldtimey scoped 99's and had my wife even been armed with a scoped .22 she'd have piled them up even before the coppers got here.