Lever action rifles - modern marvel or ancient history?

Should we relegate lever action rifles to a museum with all the other antique rifles? Let's not be too hasty! They may not be as popular now as in the past, but the lever gun is still a great hunting rifle. A scopeless lever action is so easy to carry afield. Just wrap your hand around that skinny little receiver and you can carry it all day long... no sling required.

With a scoped lever rifle, you still have the advantage of rapid follow up shots. Many have short barrels which are great for maneuvering through thick timber. Accuracy limitations make them less useful for long shots in open country.

The most common chambering for lever action rifles was in .30/30 Winchester. It is a good deer cartridge of moderate recoil with an effective range of about 200 yards.Some are available in long range cartridges such as .308Win. and .30/06.

Winchester Nat Park Service

Image courtesy National Park Service

A Little History

It would be difficult to imagine the Westward expansion of The United States without thinking of the role lever action rifles played. Just watch any Old West Movie!

Walter Hunt's Volition rifle, introduced in 1848, was an early lever action repeating rifle. It fired a cartridge design called the Rocket Ball which was basically a bullet with powder packed into a cavity at the rear. The following year an improved rifle under Lewis Jenning's patent was produced.

Volcanic rifle

The Volcanic rifle

In 1854 the Smith & Wesson Company, now owning the Jennings patent, advanced the design further with the introduction of the Volcanic pistol and rifle. These fired a new cartridge with fixed primer.

In 1860 the The Spencer repeating rifle began production. It had lever action cycling of it's .52 caliber rimfire ammunition, but the hammer had to be cocked manually. The Blakeslee Cartridge Box carried tubes of cartridges to facilitate quick loading of the Spencer.

The Henry rifle , an improvement on the Volcanic design, also used a new .44 caliber rimfire cartridge. The Henry's tubular magazine had a 15 round capacity and became known as the rifle that you "loaded on Sunday and shot all week". Both rifles saw use during The Civil War.

The Winchester Repeating Arms Co. continued improvements to the lever action rifle design with their model 1866.

The Winchester 1894 was later called the 94 and is hard to classify as an antique rifle since production continued until 2006. If my math is correct, that's 112 years!

Marlin introduced it's first lever action rifle in 1881. The model 1881 was chambered in powerful cartridges (for that day) such as the .45/70 and .38/55.

They followed with the following models:

1889

1891/39

1893/336

1894

The Marlins, beginning with the 1889 all had side ejection as opposed to Winchester's top eject.This later became a big advantage when riflescopes became popular. The scopes could mount directlyon the solid receiver top instead of off to the side.

Modern Marvels

In 1899 Savage introduced the model 99. The Savage had some very distinct features such as a "hammerless" receiver and rotary magazine with a cartridge counter. This model brought the lever actions out of antique rifle category and into a modern era.

Browning's BLR is a beautiful example of classic lever action rifle styling with a very modern rack and pinion mechanical action. It is available in several high performance cartridge chamberings.

SBI!