NO. JOHN. WAYNE

There’s something incredibly gratifying about the sound of 45-70 Gov’t brass hitting the deck. The sound is deeper than the tink tink of smaller, bottlenecked brass. It’s more of a thud. Just like its big .45-caliber bullets, even the empty brass of 45-70 hits with authority.

That gratification continues when you pick up Marlin Custom Shop’s Model 1895SBL Modern Lever Hunter package. The rifle is slim for what it is, but it feels stout — dense, even. All that steel in the action, the heavy barrel, and the epoxy-coated composite wood stock. It’s tightly fitted and well balanced. No faint interior ticking suggesting its mechanical purpose. Just the feeling that we’ve picked up the meanest man-club ever made.

The bullet in a 45-70 cartridge might only be a fraction of an inch larger than a more familiar .30-caliber rifle bullet, but that 0.15 inch translates to a 46-percent increase in diameter — a big difference when reminding something large and charging that it’s their time to die.

For this review, we ran the customized 1895 hard, extremely hard. We took Marlin’s Modern Lever Hunter to Gunsite’s inaugural class taught by senior instructors Lew Gosnell, Ed Head, and Gary Smith. It was a three-day leverama that put about 400 rounds of 45-70 Government down the gun. Considering it’s essentially a hunting rifle, that’s a career’s worth