From American Hunter:

Hunting with a lever-action rifle is a unique experience; in this day of high-magnification optics and high ballistic coefficient bullets, the lever rifles seem to be a throwback to a bygone era. However, looking at a good number of hunting scenarios—especially our deer-hunting here in the Eastern U.S., the thick forests of the Pacific Northwest and the many hunts over feeders throughout the Southern U.S.—the lever guns and their associated cartridges pose no real handicap. Quite obviously, a round-nosed bullet from one of the slower, rimmed cartridges isn’t the best choice for taking a buck across a bean field, but for shots inside of 150 yards, where the majority of my shots in New York have been, these guns and their cartridges work quite well.