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This is going to take a little while. I know tons of guys that use lever actions as their primary hunting and guiding rifle of choice. I use all types of rifles including a bunch of leverguns. They have proven themselves to be reliable, accurate, powerful and just plain old cool. The following photos are of a professional guide in Alaska that guides moose, caribou and big brown bear hunts. The first series of photos shows a bear that was wounded by a hunter he was guiding. They had to go into an alder thicket after it. When the bear charge started..........well I will just paste his story.

hey all,

well, just got back from guiding brown bears. some lessons learned, as usual the hard way. we got on a good sized bear, light colored, which i thought was a boar. we closed distance, to within 200 yards and had the bear in the open on the beach. the hunter had a .375 h&h. shot the bear high in the shoulder, and it humped up, he was slow on the bolt and i told him to shoot it again.

he shot, missed and the bear took off, uphill, fast! i started in, and got off a total of 7 shots, none of which hit the bear, at ranges of 225 to 275 yards running thru the alders. of course the client was shooting as well, and was hitting nothing either. it was almost clear, so i took a range on the bear, 250 yards. the hunter shot and hit it, not sure where, and it dove off the hill and got behind another ridge in front of us. we followed blood to the alders and decided to wait till the morning.

after an anxious night of waiting, another guide, my hunter and i got on the blood trail in the am. followed it thru alders for nearly a mile. spotted it in the alders across the valley, and the other guide gave us hand signals to close in on the bear.

well, at 25 yards, joel (the other guide) started acting really animated so i knew we were close. at 20 yards the bears head popped up in the brush. man, it was thick in there. my hunter spotted the bear and got set to shoot, at the time he said he was gonna shoot, the bear got up, and stepped our way. it was a bit of a shootout. my hunter shot, hit the bear, then i started paying attention to my gun. i levered in 3 quick shots with my .457 shooting 350 grain kodiak bullets, and the client shot once more and it was done, WHEW!! the hunter later said he was not nervous till the shooting started, and i said "well, you shoulda been!!!" trailing a wounded brown bear thru alders is a really, really lousy job.

i was disappointed in the fact that i did not make a follow up shot faster than i did. and that i was unable to make a hit, even though the bear was deep in the cover. it was also a terrible thing that a majestic beast had to suffer over night.

some terminal ballistic information, the initial hit was high in the shoulder, did not hit spine, or apparently lungs. i recovered 3 bullets. one was a 375 failsafe bullet that the client shot into it, its petals were all torn off, and it was found under the hide in a rear leg, after traversing the shoulder and body. i found 2 .458 bullets, one was really mashed out (two bullets had shot thru and alder as big as my fore arm, i suspect this bullet was one of em) it weighed in at 303 grains, had a frontal area of 1.08" x .660"!!!

thats right, over an inch across! and over 80% weight retention. the other bullet was 332 grains and .800". not bad retention for point blank range inpacts. velocity was 2177 fps avg when checked at the range.

i was wishing for a brockman or clement extended magazine when i was in the middle of things! no such things as too many bullets. turned out to be an 8' 4" bear. my hunter was happy and at that point, so was i.

there is a bit of discussion on this forum about bears, and what works and what doesn't. from my point of view, leverguns can put maximum aimed fire in the shortest possible time. aimed fire being the operative word. anyone can shoot a gun, even pretty fast, but the levergun has proven to me to be able to place the shots accurately AND quickly. that is a good thing for anyone that needs follow up shots quickly.

was a great hunt, and enjoyed all the hunters on the boat, and ended up home safe and sound. not too bad,

Birdman

This is birdman with the bear

This is the bear from the view that birdamn and his hunter had.

This is one of the alders that one of the bullets passed through.

After this incident birdman said he wished he had more shots availible. He bought a new XLR 45-70 and had Clements cut the barrel back to 20". They put an extended mag tube on it. Glove loop lever. Brockman QD scope mounts with the pop up peep sight in the rear and Brockman sights. The gun is very acuarate and got him 8 shots. This year he used it on a caribou hunt before guiding a bear hunter. Once again his skill with a levergun kept him out of trouble. This time he shot the bear after the client hit it with a .300 to keep it from getting into a thicket.

Here is the new rifle.

The rear sight/mount

with the scope installed.

fruit of his labor

Leverguns are for real. So much has been said about rainbow trajectories and such but I use them (.444,.450 and .45-70 to shoot 300+ yards without hesitation. I am a crop sniper. I do deer population control kills on farm land on state permits. I use 45-70s in many of the fields where the shots are 300 yards and under and make most of these shots off hand due to the rolling terrain. They are ideal for such purposes. If you are on cable internet you can watch the follwing video of one of my leverguns in action.reflex264

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3433415096555745370

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