I bought an early Marlin .45-70 from a neighbor who had used it to kill a large brown bear in Alaska. (His wife captured the event on an 8mm movie camera. Cool footage!) It had a Redfield variable scope on it, I think it was about 1.5X5 or so. It had a very smooth action and a great trigger, the best on any lever action Marlin or Winchester I have ever felt.
It was a great rifle. I had worked up a heavy handload using 500-510 grain softpoints intended for the .458 Winchester. It was brutal to shoot. It hurt with those loads, although with 405 grain factory ammo it was a pussycat.
Being somewhat devious, it soon became my "loaner" rifle when "friends" would hit me up to borrow a gun to go deer hunting. You know the sort, "Say, I need a rifle to go hunting with next week. It seems like a lot of money to spend for something I would only use once a year. You have a lot of guns, do you have one I could borrow?"
My handloads were in once-fired factory load brass that I had tumbled. I put them back in the original box and they look like factory ammo. I would give the borrower the rifle, a box of 20 of my dinosaur killers and tell them, "You will need to check the scope's zero. It will shoot way off for you than for me. Please save me the empty brass, I hear it can be reloaded."
The first borrower was a fellow dating my little sister. Kind of a blowhard. Had a "full set of Weatherby rifles" in storage where his family lived but didn't have time to have one send for the hunt. He and my sis would go plinking with a Marlin .22 rifle he had and burn up a brick or more of .22 rounds in an afternoon, so I knew he liked to shoot. I handed him the box of shells, showed him how the lever action worked and off they went to sight it in.
The guy was a tall, skinny yahoo. He taped a 2' x 2' 100 yard sighting target up at 50 yards. Sitting down at the range's bench, resting his elbows on the carpeted bench top, sis says he dry fired a couple of clicks, then cycled in a cartridge, aimed in and "POWWWWWW!!!!" His shoulder jerked back a good foot, he nearly let the rifle hit him in the head and he looked a bit dazed. Looking at the target through binoculars, she said the shot was at the edge of the paper about 5 o'clock.
After a few minutes, he cycled the rifle and took a second shot. Sis says that it tore the dirt up in front of and below the target frames, spraying the target and backer with dirt and rocks. Lots of holes in the paper but none round or bullet-sized.
Dazed look on his face again. "Low," sis told him.
Rather than shoot again, he told her, "Close enough" and emptied the rest of the rounds manually and boxed them back up.
I saw him a couple of days later, wearing his normal beater t-shirt. His right shoulder and upper arm was a lovely purple-turning-green.
When the hunt ended 2 weeks later, he returned the cased .45-70 and the box of ammo, which still held 18 loaded rounds and the 2 empties. "Didn't see anything big enough to shoot."
I said nothing.
He never asked to borrow a gun again.
No one I loaned it to ever shot more than one round, or asked to borrow it a second time!
I sold it after buying a Browning copy of the M-1886. I should have kept it. Very good gun and a source of high entertainment!
