​It is funny how a hunting season can change course and shape up differently than planned due to circumstances outside of one’s control.

Nearly devoid of wild game, North America’s landscape in the late-1800s was a very different place. Bison, elk, and even deer were nearly wiped from the continent to supply a growing demand for meat, hides, and heads. To provide feathers for fashionable hats of high-society ladies, migratory birds were annihilated—sometimes by the hundreds with one shot from a massive “punt” gun. Only a…

Favored for decades, the lever-action rifle yielded to the turn-bolt. Is it hurtling down a perilous path?