If the owner of this rifle ever got out and walked while hunting, carrying his rifle up and down real mountains, or slung under his chest crawling through the underbrush, he would see how poor it really is. Alas, he doesn't, and he won't.

There are practical aspects to a good hunting rifle that only become apparent when you are in the field, with the rifle, hour after hour, carrying it, slinging it on your shoulder, getting in and out of vehicles, loading and unloading it, using it as an alpenstock or balancing pole on steep slopes. Only then do you see how it carries, what sharp edges dig into you, how quiet it is in operation. Only then do you see if it has a comfortable balance point that will allow you to carry it for mile after mile.

A few makers say they care about these ergonomic fine points, and a few even produce rifles that suggest they mean what they say. But most rifles are produced by engineers on the one hand who don't hunt or shoot, dictated to by marketing people who also don't hunt or shoot.

The engineers are in love with things they can measure--accuracy, velocity, energy--but accuracy and velocity, alone or together, do not make a hunting rifle. If they did, we would all be pushing wheelbarrows with benchrest rifles in them, setting up on hilltops and waiting for that big antelope to emerge a kilometer away.

If there is an African equivalent of the American deer hunter's Winchester 94 in .30-30, it is either the Mauser 93 in 7x57, or the British Lee-Enfield in .303. Even in a minimally sporterized state, both of those are excellent hunting rifles. They are accurate enough, and powerful enough, for the purpose; they are durable to a fault, easy to carry, and absolutely dependable. Both have shown an astonishing degree of accuracy over the past century in thousand-yard matches, but that's not really relevant.

When you think of it, there are really very few hunting situations in Africa today that could not be more than adequately handled by a sporterized 7x57, with iron sights, in the hands of a hunter who knows how to stalk and how to shoot under real hunting conditions. It's been true for a century, and it's true now.