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Our Poster may not know (YET!) that the .30-30 is the first really successful smokeless powder round...I think first offered with a lead bullet (a beautiful thing)...and "has killed more deer than any other cartridge"...which always hungry Muttlys really appreciate. Under-powered by today's standards...but the sweetest and most useful package that there is...and fast-shooting when the chips are down. I'd just hate to face a southern wild boar with one...but it beats not making it up the tree while shouting last words. May buy a second or two. Muttly grateful for small favors. Which brings us to "the venerable and oh-so-proven .45-70," with which boar can be HUNTED...and deer dropped handily. A short barrelled Marlin is amazingly handy in the deep, thick woods, and with 300gr. bullets, flat shooting enough, certainly. It has a wonderful reputation, can use lighter "Cowboy" rounds, and should generally keep you out of the swamps chasing wounded whatever-it-is, since it doesn't need expansion to do the work.

And the .30-30 is also a particularly sweet little number in a couple of the bolt action and single shot rifles that have been chambered for it. Since they do not share the tubular-feed magazine of most of the .30-30 lever rifles, their ammunition can be crafted with pointed bullets unsuitable in the leverguns for safety reasons, and some .30-30 rifles so loaded are capable of some accuracy feats that would be fairly amazing to those used to the cowboy saddle carbines.

One backburner I've long considered is reworking a .410 double shotgun into a double .30-30 instead. One of these days when I have a couple of nearly matched barrels and the right shotgun to work with, I'll build that neat little .30-30 double gun.

-archy-/-