- CHOICE OF A HUNTING RIFLE. 47 



show you what kind of a rifle I choose. Modesty and 

 some ignorance have prevented me from appearing before, 

 but now I suppress the former, and having the combined 

 ideas of the said articles aforesaid, I can form some idea of 

 my own as to what I want. 



The perfect hunting rifle has not yet been produced. 

 We have had attempts on paper and at different armories 

 and gun works, but good as some of the weapons have 

 been, there has arisen some objector or other who shows 

 convincingly that the gun won't do, and so all that labor is 

 lost. We don't seem to get any nearer perfection, and it 

 is just possible as long as people differ, we never shall. 

 Now, it would be supposed that a gun that will kill one 

 deer will kill any other deer of the same kind, if hit simi- 

 larly, but we find it is not so. It is a curious and inexpli- 

 cable fact, as witness the total disagreement of Western 

 deer hunters as to the perfect deer gun. One wants a 

 .45-125-360 double-detachable reversible pin-fire repeater, 

 and the next one must have a .40-226-341 multiplex- 

 extractor, combined safety bolt and a linch-pin single fire 

 nothing else will do to kill a deer with. One man never 

 went out with a repeater and got anything but tired out, 

 and he has heard time and again how some other hunter in 

 a critical moment, when an angry grizzly was rushing at 

 him with open arms and mouth, had the carrier-pin-get-foul 

 of the breech-hammer, whereby the trajectory caught on the 

 cannelure and stuck in the collar. Of course the man got 

 left. Then the other fellow tells how he pumped lead into 

 buffalo and Utes all day until the gun had to be cooled off 

 in water, and it worked all along as smooth as a piston rod. 

 Which of these guns will best kill a deer? Either will 

 probably, at times, put a ball into leg or paunch instead of 

 the eye, so that neither can be called a perfect weapon. 

 Then another hunter comes to the fore with a gun that 



