I wrote that poorly, I really meant in reference to your comment about heavy, unbalanced, scoped rifles and how you wouldn't want one in the deer woods. I guarantee that modern, scoped rifles outnumber 30-30 lever guns during deer season by a wide, wide margin. Even .243 specifically, I'm sure it varies from place to place but I'd bet the .243 by itself outnumbers 30-30 guns for deer hunting. From what I've seen in my area, it's not even close. The last 2 years, I've gone to a local range just before deer season to do some sighting. (Usually I shoot on private property). On those trips to that range, at least 6 trips, I saw exactly *one* lever gun, it was a 30-30 but even it wore a scope. The guy was checking it's zero "in case I decide to take it out" and he then switched to his 7mm something. Otherwise, I saw scoped handguns, many bolt guns (almost all scoped) of which .270 and .30-06 seemed most common and a couple of ARs. Just counting my own parties .243 rifles, we outnumbered all the .30-30s by 3:1 and there were certainly several other .243s. Those heavy, unbalanced, scoped, bolt action rifles outnumbered .30-30 guns by 20 or 30 to one and even the .30-30 had a scope. Is that definitive? Certainly not, but it's consistent with everything else I've seen and heard. In my pizza shop, I talk hunting with folks nearly every day during the season (when I'm not hunting
) and the hunting stories start well before and end well after the actual season. The query of "So, what are you throwing at 'em?" comes up frequently... The answer ".30-30", does not.