I heard from a friend of mine that talked to a silhouette committee member that was canvasing some experienced shooters to see how they felt about making the Savage Model 99 legal for Lever Action, thinking that allowing that particular rifle, it would make the sport more popular.

I would say that most of if not all of the silhouette committee members were not around when we came up with the rules for Cowboy Lever Action back in the late 1990's. I was there so I know why rifles like the Savage Model 99 and the Winchester Model 88 were not included in the list of rifles allowed for competition.
If the Savage Model 99 is allowed now, it will open a can of worms since it does not have a tubular magazine and most of the 15 or so calibers offered do not have rimmed case cartridges. Another thing is that since the cartridges we use must have round or flat nosed bullets, it would be so easy not to comply with the rule since the rounds would be loaded onto a detachable magazine instead of a tubular magazine.

I would say to the silhouette committee, if in fact they are considering making rule changes include rifles not permitted under current rules, to leave the rules for Lever Action alone, we are doing fine with them the way they are now.

Current rules are fine.No need to change.

I would say the silhouette committee or designated members should be at the National match and attend the competitors meeting that has historically been held at National matches. No show, no meeting at the 2022 match.

The savage 99 is a completely different animal from the rifles currently allowed under the rules. I seriously doubt there are a deep pool of Cowboy/Leveraction shooters waiting to join the sport, if only they could shoot a 99. I like 99’s but would be a no vote on that rule change if it where to ever see light.

tony is spot on with this, too many times a small suggestion has made a change that was later regretted.

Yes, I read the rules. I was going to quote the ones before the rifle specs and skip the whole with a tubular magazine part. I'll just ask a bunch of questions since I'm 3-years into the lever game. Why are the rimless 30-remington and 35-remington allowed?

If the allowed cartridges must have round or flat nosed bullets, what difference does it make if they're being fed from a rotary or tube mag? To me, it doesn't matter. Want to shoot a round nose 7-08 out of your savage, go ahead. It's probably going to go faster than the 7mm waters or whatever, and as long as it doesn't mess up the targets, use it.

How many lever shooters load all 5 rounds in the tubular magazine and shoot each bank? Looking around, most of them load one in the mag, chamber it, load another in the mag, and fire. Repeat that sequency 4 more times.

Is a rimless cartridge really that much more accurate than a rimmed one, or is the Savage 99 that much more accurate that a Winchester, Marlin, Henry, or whatever tube fed rifle? For the largest majority of the shooters, the rifle, the ammo, the sights are not the problem. The best shooters are going to win whether they're shooting a savage 99 or a winchester 94.

Silhouette needs fewer rules, more options, and more shooters. If NRA wants to keep pre-202# records for when pre-Savage 99s were not allowed, let them.

You could make the same argument for a Browning BLR. Then as long as the bullet is shaped correctly why not a single shot with a lever. Then some time along the line the bullet nose criteria changes…. And soon the rifles on the firing line look and act nothing like they do now.

It’s shallow, but looks matter. This discipline of Cowboy/Lever action silhouette was formed on simplicity and the looks and love Americans have for the “Western” lever action. In our minds that looks like a 66, 73, 92, 94 and the Marlins, not the ugly duckling savage 99 or BLR.

I think in other Silhouette disciplines there is some room to make a few changes that would bring more shooters in, but not cowboy.

Mechanically the tube magazine does matter, mostly in a negative way. It causes all kinds of accuracy consistency problems with all its attachment points to the barrel and harmonic issues as you load the magazine (occasionally there’s a rare exception). Thus the practice of loading only a few rounds has grown. There is some slight advantage to the 99 and it’s box magazine. Winning is nice but not at the expense of ugly guns on the cowboy line.

No reason why folks couldn't take their BLR's, 99's, Finwolf etc to a high power silhouette match, so the argument to let them into lever gun falls short IMHO.

I'm not sure what to do with the looks matter and shoot your lever gun at a high power match comments. These equipment discussions are kind of pointless at least here. There was one awhile back about red dots on lever guns and another about 5 pages about barrel replacements on lever guns. It's pushing a rope to get most of y'all to see another pov. I'd hate to suggest a scoped lever gun category.