With all due respect to the many great Marlins of the past, this rifle bears an uncanny resemblance not to them but to the cult favorite Winchester Model 71. Both rifles are lever guns that deliver Serious Thump—in fact, the ballistics for their respective cartridges are almost identical. The main loading for the 71’s cartridge, the .348 WCF, is a 200-grain bullet at 2,530 fps. The sole loading for the .338 Marlin Express (developed and loaded by Hornady) is 200 grains at 2,500 fps.

The rifle I got to try out is ...

... an all-stainless gun with a laminated stock and 24-inch barrel. You can get the same thing with a 22-inch barrel (I would go with this one) or a blue-steel and walnut model with a 22-inch barrel. The new cartridge is based loosely on the breathtakingly obscure .376 Steyr.  It’s a chubby little rascal with very little taper, a fairly sharp shoulder and, since it has to work through a lever gun, a pronounced rim.

Factory ballistics specify a 200-grain poly-tipped FTX bullet at 2,565 fps from a 24-inch barrel. However, my chronograph said 2,485. I say, who cares? For all its power, the Marlin kicks about like a .30/06 of the same weight; it should not pose a problem to anyone who is not a sissy.

The rifle weighs 8 pounds, 2 ounces with a 3X-9X scope in Weaver mounts. The trigger pulls 5 pounds even. It’s clean and consistent, but 5 pounds is too heavy for me; I would take it to a gunsmith and have it lose a pound or so.

The Winchester 71, for all its virtues, was not an accurate rifle by modern standards. You couldn’t mount a scope on it, and even with a good peep sight typical groups for the ones I’ve shot ran in the 2 ½- to 3-inch range. The Marlin test gun will shoot rings around that; the average group size was 1.135-inch, which is bolt-action accuracy, and pretty damn good bolt-action accuracy at that.

For some reason, Marlin continues to use the same old semi-buckhorn rear sight that has blighted its rifles for many decades. About the only good thing you can say about it is that it folds flat and out of the way of a scope. If you’d like iron sights as an option, get a ghost ring sight in the rear, a big bead up front, and a good QD mount.

If you’re interested in shooting at long range—which for this cartridge would be beyond 300 yards—find yourself a scope with a range-compensating rifle that is appropriate to its velocity and flatten things at 400. I would not push it beyond there. The .338 Marlin Express has plenty of power, the FTX bullet is good and tough, but 2,500 fps is good only up to a point.

MSRP for this gun is around $800, which is certainly fair. It is a powerful, accurate, versatile firearm that is also drop-dead reliable and fast-firing if you need that. If you want more, you’re just plain greedy. Marlinfirearms.com --DEP

Last week, while rooting through the used guns in a sporting-goods store upstate, I chanced upon a Winchester Model 71 in very nice shape. “That rifle,” said the store owner, "belonged to Floyd Patterson.” Patterson, who died in 2006, was heavyweight boxing champion from 1956 to 1962. He was one of the best men, and one of the worst fighters, ever to hold that title. In any event, he had fine taste in guns.

The Model 71 was a modification of Winchester’s Model 1886, which has my nomination as the finest rifle ever built in America. Technically, the 71 was ...

... a failure—it was built only from 1935 to 1957, and only 47, 254 were made. It was not a cheap rifle--in its last year of production a 71 cost $130, about twice the price of a Model 94—and it was chambered only for the .348 Winchester, a thumping big round that was too much for deer.

But it was a lovely piece of machinery, and it pointed better than any lever gun I’ve ever handled, and them as had them treasured them. I owned a nice one in the 1980s but of course I let it go. Posterity has been kind to the 71. A standard model in 90 percent condition is worth $2,000, and the deluxe version will bring twice that. The 71 is not particularly accurate, and you can’t mount a scope on it, but if you’re willing to accept its limitations and its recoil, there is still nothing better for deer and elk and bear. Floyd Patterson could tell you that.

One of the very nicest features of AyA guns (which I wrote about a month ago, here), were the safety buttons. I liked them so much I took a picture of one. As you can see, they stick up high where you can’t miss them and they practically grab your thumb like Velcro thanks to the sharp hand checkering on top. They snick off easily with a mere flick and are easily among the most positive safeties to operate that I have ever tried.

That brings me to the subject of safeties good and bad: a good safety comes off easily so you don’t even have to ... ... think about it as you raise the gun to shoot.

Personally, I dislike the safety on the Benelli Nova most of all. It is tiny and difficult to find in its spot in front of the trigger guard.  For repeaters, the Browning Gold’s big, triangular, easy to push safety  is the all-time best.

When it comes to O/Us, I have seen more bird’s lives saved by the Browning Citori/Winchester 101 style selective safeties than by any other. These safeties slide side to side to select the top or bottom barrel, and forward to make the gun ready to fire. What happens instead is, in the field when people try to push them forward, the safety slides halfway between “O” and “U” and won’t go forward at all.

The gun stays on “safe” and the bird flies away not only unscathed but unshot-at.

Here is a simple trick to solve that problem forever: if you are right handed, switch the safety over to the left to shoot the top barrel first and leave it there. If you’re left handed, leave the safety pushed over to the right,always. There is no room to explain (and a good magician never reveals his tricks anyway) but I promise that works.

Meanwhile, the subject is safeties: favorites, least favorites, funny stories, horror stories, whatever you got.

This question came up on another gun blog when someone mentioned that they had seen a rifle of mine for sale, and another blogger asked about the gun—a 7x57—and inquired if I was still alive. Far from taking offense, I see this as a reasonable question, and will attempt to answer it as best I may.

On the one hand, I am very old. I can remember before television. I can remember when actual music was played on the radio. When I was born, there were still a fair number of men alive who had fought in the Civil War. I can remember when people believed what our government had to say. Obviously, that is a long, long time ago and does not argue well for my survival.

On the other hand, someone is writing this stuff and it sounds like me. And, in a week I’m going way up to northern Maine to freeze my nasty bits and not see a single one of the six deer that are left in that state. That sounds like something I would do. Last week I dropped enough at Cabela’s and Brownell’s to finance Cruella Pelosi’s health care package for a month. That’s definitely me.

And so my fellow bloggers, is the old bastard still sucking air? Probably.