I always enjoyed shooting that rifle, but I never had much chance to shoot it outdoors at any real distance. Mostly I shot it at indoor pistol ranges at 50 or 75 feet. I could shoot it a lot better than a pistol at 75 feet, but between my shooting abilities and the fairly crude iron sights on it, I could not call it a tack driver. That is really the downside of that gun - it is hard to put good sights on it. Maybe nowadays a red-dot sight would work well, but the factory sights are a design from the 1890's. No, I would call it a very fun gun for plinking, but not suited for real target use, and maybe not even for hunting squirrels or rats at 50 yards. You could get tang mounted aperture sights for the original Winchesters, which would have helped, but I have no idea if they are available for the Rossi/Taurus.
I very much prefer a pump to a lever myself. I just never got handy with levers, whereas pumps seemed perfectly natural to me.
BTW, the Taurus pump is the same as the Rossi pump, because Taurus bought Rossi and just began marking the rifles Taurus. The only changes they made were to the shape of the forend (flat bottomed instead of round) and adding a little safety catch on the breechblock to lock up the firing pin. I assume their legal department insisted on that, because it does not serve much practical purpose.
If Remington still makes their hammerless pump .22, it might be more useful. It saddens me to say that, because I like the Winchester/Rossi/Taurus design, but it is true.
