A few years ago, a friend of mine came into possession of his grandfather's M1892 Winchester in .44 WCF. Although I recall it being in pretty poor shape from years banging around on the family's ranch, it came with a cigar box of photos of his grandfather, father, great uncles, and uncles hunting with that and similar rifles. Coyotes. Pronghorns. Lots and lots of Deer. A few elk. A moose. As well as what looked like were probably sage grouse and various edible and non-edible rodents. The older photos included exclusively lever-action rifles, and the majority of them M92s. The later ones included a smattering of M94s (probably in .30 WCF) military-surplus Springfields, Krags, a SMLE, and some I couldn't identify - all with open sights. The newer photos didn't tend to indicate that the hunters were any more or less successful than they were decades before. His grandfather always held that M92.

Today, most of us would probably cringe at the thought of hunting deer with a .44-40, but any of us who've been brought up in hunting families probably have a box of those old photos lying around somewhere showing someone who did. Of course, we don't know the stories of the animals hit and lost. But the fact remains that our predecessors did a whole lot of hunting with nothing more than an open-sighted rifle chambered for those weak antique cartridges: the .44-40, .38-40, .30-30, .32 Special, .38-55, .35 Rem. Even some of the hotter numbers of the day are frowned upon today: the .30-40, .303 Brit, and even the .30-06 garners its share of criticism.

Have big game animals gotten tougher? Or are we just getting soft? We need more "power," whether it be velocity or magnification. We need "pass-throughs" (apparently shock alone isn't enough to kill these uber-beasts afield today). We need 500-yard capability (uber-beasts having senses to defeat even the best stalk).

It's that time of year at the gun counter when dads are looking for junior's first deer rifle. And the conversations I overhear are fairly predictable. Store person suggests something like a .243, 7mm-08, or .308. Dad insists its "not big enough" though junior is barely as tall as the .300 WSM X-Bolt that dad has his eyes on for him. Dad says his is a .30-378 and "it's definitely too big" for junior.

And I think of my friend's M92 Winchester, that box of old photos, and I just smile.