Semisane, that is a great looking collection of guns. You are right, the side hammers don't look so bad with scopes on them. Maybe I have let tradition cloud my thinking. Also, I had a TC Hawken that a friend had tried to mount a scope on, I had bought it from him before I really examined it closely. He had someone drill a couple of holes for the mount, one of the holes was out of line. I then found out that TC didn't want folks drilling holes in their barrels. I never shot the gun. I decided to clean the bore butter out of the barrel and sell the gun, there was rust under the bore butter. So I did sell it to a guy that trashed the barrel and put another on it. All of that may have soured me on mounting scopes on Hawkens. I also like the idea of a stainless barrel that is not as quick to rust. The ones I have seen were in-lines that were drilled for scope mounts at the factory. So I am keeping my eyes open for a good inline stainless to mount a scope on for hunting. To each his own.