I spent the summer of 1973 in the wilderness of British Columbia.
My buddy and I had rented horses, including a pack horse to carry our gear and food, and we were travelling way back in the woods where there were no roads.
We were camping out and exploring.
We saw several groups of big-game guides, they were out clearing the trails and setting up camps for the upcoming hunting season.
All these guys were on horseback, like I said, no roads within 40 miles.
They all had rifles in saddle scabbards. A bolt action rifle is unfit for this use, the bolt either sticks into the horse's side, or it sticks into the rider's thigh.
All of these big game guides were armed with the Marlin .30-30
They used the rifle to get "camp meat," which means you shoot a small moose, or a couple whitetail deer on the first day of the hunt, to have somehthing for the guides and hunters to eat during the week-long hunt.
I would ask these guys, Don't you ever have a problem with a grizzly claiming a kill? You have shot a moose or mountain goat, and when you return with the pack horse to pack out the meat a griz is there?
They told me that this was their biggest concern, and they had no problem shooting grizzly with the .30-30.
They said that when a grizzly charges he comes in low. That is not the time to shoot, you don't have a good angle.
But, ten feet away, the griz stands straight up, and he wants to kill with a strike of his paw.
It is when the bear stands straight up that you fire right into his chest.
These big game guides assured me that the .30-30 was perfect for this, because you could get such a quick second shot. They said that, indeed, you may be able to get three shots into a grizzly's chest, and two or three shots would stop the bear in his tracks.
It sounded incredible to me, as a guy from Georgia who had never even seen a grizzly, that you would stand your ground and wait until the bear was ten feet away, and then to be sure to wait until the bear stood upright, before you began to fire. But that is what they said.
I talked to 5 or 6 of these big game guides and they all told me the same thing. These were men who made their living by taking Americans on hunts for mountain goats, moose, and grizzly and I could tell, they weren't kidding, they weren't trying to tell a tall tale to a greenhorn.
In fact, two of these guys told me that they had killed a griz in just this fashion with their Marlin .30-30s.