[BGHater]

From Wiki: Advantages and Disadvantages

While lever-action rifles were (and are) popular with hunters and sporting shooters, they were not widely accepted by the military. One significant reason for this was that it is harder to fire a lever-action from the prone position (compared to a straight-pull or bolt-action rifle), and while nominally possessing a greater rate of fire (Contemporary Winchester advertisements claimed their rifles could fire 2 shots a second) than bolt-action rifles, lever-action firearms are also generally fed from a tubular magazine, which limits the ammunition that can be used in them. Pointed centerfire Spitzer bullets, for example, can cause explosions in a tubular magazine, as the point of each cartridge's projectile rests on the primer of the next cartridge in the magazine (soft-tipped Hornady ammunition made for tube-fed rifles avoid this problem). The tubular magazine may also negatively impact the harmonics of the barrel, which limits the theoretical accuracy of the rifle; a tubular magazine under the barrel pushes the center of gravity forward, it may alter the balance of the rifle in ways undesirable to some shooters. Many of the newer lever action rifles by Marlin are capable of shooting groups smaller than 1 minute of angle, comparable to most modern bolt-action rifles.

Due to the higher rate of fire and shorter overall length than most bolt-action rifles, lever-actions have remained popular to this day for sporting use, especially short- and medium-range hunting in forests, scrub, or bushland. Lever-action firearms are also used in some quantity by prison guards in the United States, as well as by wildlife authorities/game wardens in many parts of the world.

[swmobuffalo]

I don’t like bolt action for the simple weight factor. That and I shoot left handed as it were.

[Westlander]

Wiki is a load of crap.

[roamer_1]

A pump action can be performed while holding one's beer with the pinky finger of the trigger hand (through the spout-hole), explaining the preference in design for duck hunters, who often cannot set a beer down in swampy conditions.

Deer hunting, on the other hand, does not present this problem, as most trucks come with cup holders.

[El Gato]

If there were no semiautomatics, pump action rifles would be just fine. They are fine anyway. They are faster to use than bolt actions, but are almost as good, if not as good, at extracting stubborn cases. They might be a hair less accurate than bolt actions. They basically share most of the characteristics of semiautomatics. There are even "California" versions of the AR-15 which are pump actions.

The lever action was fine in it's day, and is still good. Some lever actions have box magazines, but most have tubular magazines, like most pump and semi-auto shotguns. Those are not good for pointy bullets, because the recoil shock may cause the point to set off the primer of the catridge in front of it.

[absolootezer0]

since when is lever action faster than pump action?