Brush Gun

The brush gun is a weapon in Fallout: New Vegas.

Background
"Brush gun" is an informal umbrella term used to refer to any large-caliber, lever-action hunting carbine. The name refers to the fact that these carbines are designed to be handled easily in brush, or in any tight spaces where a long-barreled rifle would be unwieldy or impractical. Brush guns are chambered for large cartridges powerful enough to take down big game at close to medium range.

While the heavy caliber and shortened barrel are incompatible with long-range accuracy, they bring significant improvements to the weapon's speed of handling, damage per round, and rate of fire. Thus, brush guns are similar to hunting rifles, but they sacrifice long range accuracy for a major increase in speed of target acquisition, ease of handling and rate of follow-up shots.

Characteristics
One of the main rifles of the NCR Veteran Ranger, the brush gun is a lever-action rifle firing .45-70 Gov't ammunition. It has a semi-buckhorn iron sight similar to the cowboy repeater and the trail carbine.

Due to the gun's tubular magazine, it is reloaded by hand one bullet at a time, allowing the player to interrupt reloading mid-way. This allows the weapon to be fired before reloading is complete.

High damage output, low spread, and a moderate firing rate make this gun a very powerful and accurate weapon. However, it chambers the .45-70 Gov't round, one of the rarest ammunition types in the game. In spite of this, the brush gun uses this ammunition quite efficiently: it has the highest damage per shot and damage per second of all the weapons that use this ammunition. Unfortunately the iron sights are large and obstructive, meaning that it is difficult to track fast moving enemies like cazadores. When loaded with hand loaded semi-wadcutter rounds, this can be a very effective weapon to use against high-level targets, such as deathclaws and super mutants.

Its damage is on par with that of the anti-materiel rifle loaded with armor piercing rounds and boasts almost three times the damage-per-second when used with the Cowboy perk. It can be a much more effective weapon to use as it does not feature a large scope and has a much faster cyclic rate of fire. Despite the long reload, there is an exploit one can use when reloading, double-tap the hot-key for changing ammunition types and the magazine should be completely reloaded.

Durability
The brush gun can fire a total of about 745 standard rounds, the equivalent of 125 reloads, from full condition before breaking. When modified with the forged receiver, it can fire a total of about 1120 standard rounds, the equivalent of 187 reloads.

Modifications

 * Brush gun forged receiver: increases weapon condition by 50%.

Variants

 * Medicine Stick - a unique version purchased from Vendortron at the Gun Runners if Gun Runners' Arsenal has been installed.

Locations

 * 188 trading post - Alexander occasionally sells one.
 * Gun Runners - The Vendortron sells one.
 * Hidden Valley bunker armory - can sometimes be purchased there.
 * NCR Veteran Rangers - commonly found carrying a brush gun.
 * Can also be found on Great Khans, specifically at Red Rock Canyon or sometimes in the Great Khan armory if you have a positive reputation with the faction. Buying it in the armory is cheaper than anywhere else in the Mojave Wasteland.
 * Brush guns are commonly found on White Legs warriors at higher levels (20-25+).
 * One of the Legionary assassins may carry a brush gun (level 21 onwards).
 * Brush guns can commonly be found on lobotomites at high levels (40-50).
 * Brush guns can be found on marked men at high levels (30-40).

Behind the scenes

 * The brush gun is not based on any one particular rifle, but is influenced by guns such as the Winchester 1886 and Marlin Guide Gun.

Bugs

 * Sometimes when reloading the weapon in third person view, you may not see the usual lever action.
 * Sometimes a serious bug will affect the weapon's shooting capabilities, making every bullet hit about 20 feet to the right of where you are aiming. Also this bug affects the iron sights, as you can not see them when you zoom in.
 * When changing ammunition types this weapon could be caught in a reload loop, this is also common on the cowboy repeater and trail carbine, and also happens when you give this weapon to a companion. This can be fixed for the player character by changing the ammunition type again.
 * As with all lever action weapons, a bug exists where if one changes ammunition types twice consecutively, the weapon returns to having a full magazine in the ammunition type that was selected.
 * When modding this weapon with the brush gun forged receiver, and repairing it with a Weapon Repair Kit to full condition, the condition will raise to 150%, instead of making it degrade at a slower rate. basically making it 100% for much longer (Fixed in 1.06).
 * A brush gun with the forged receiver mod attached will actually degrade in condition when a weapon repair kit is used on it.
 * Sometimes the lever may remain downward if holstered immediately after firing. Simply drawing and holstering the weapon again will fix this.
 * Reloading in third-person mode while moving even at a snail's pace will show the reload animation without cycling the lever once reloading is finished. This happens even if the reload was interrupted mid-way. Also, the lever will remain in a lowered position until you zoom in, put it away, etc.
 * Sometimes firing multiple shots in V.A.T.S. will cause the brush gun to rapidly fire all shots while still zoomed on the player, resulting in zero damage to the enemies.
 * In V.A.T.S. mode when firing multiple shots, the brush gun will randomly miss enemies with each shot even with multiple two-handed weapon perks, 100 to Guns skill, and aiming at the same body part. This is especially common when dealing with up-close enemies such as night stalkers, and cyberdogs.
 * The reload animation of lever action weapons doesn't have a corresponding jam animation, so the weapon will not jam, even at near-breaking conditions.