Well, I'm staying with family in SD for Thanksgiving.... several firsts this week...
I went out with my uncle the other day and shot clays with an Ithaca over/under 12g (GREAT gun, first experience with an over/under), a Benelli semiauto 12g (I'd take the Ithaca over the Benelli any day, it feels better and I hit more clays with it), and the M1 Garand my grandpa used in Korea.
The M1 was the first rifle I fired with peep sights, and the stock rear sight on it seemed a bit large for precision shooting, but I am definitely a believer in peep sights now, especially if the sight comes with interchangeable rear apertures (this M1 didn't).
Then yesterday my aunt let me play around with an old beat up Winchester 250 in .22 S/L/LR. The wood on the forearm moved around a bit, the plastic rear sight would move from side to side when you touched it, the action was really stiff and looked like it hadn't seen a drop of oil in years... this was probably not the best example of a good lever rifle, BUT this gun did feel really good in my hands and was a BLAST to shoot!!!
I fired the thirty or so rounds they had on hand and went into town and picked up a few hundred more. If it wasn't 30 degrees out I probably would have used it all up in the same day!!!
Even with the questionable rear sight I had a near 100% hit rate on the bottoms of tin cans at 30 yds (a feat for me with dovetail sights in cold weather... ).
This was also my first experience shooting a 22. I found out it is just as fun hitting the target with a 22 as it is hitting it with a .30 cal rifle... probably more since there's just enough recoil to feel it and it's nice and quiet.
I'm sold on the lever action idea... the rifle is really light, thin, and there seems to be a greater vertical distance between the line of sight and the butt of the stock, so I don't have to crank my neck as far to look through the sights like I do on my AK.
Now I just wish I had the money to pickup a nice lever gun in 22mag.
One more question, of the more common models, which lever guns can be reloaded while you still have a round in the chamber and your sights on target?
Thanks!
-Jacob