Winchester Repeating Arms Company

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The Winchester story doesn't start with Oliver Winchester — it starts with a hollow bullet that didn't work well enough to matter. Most people who own a Model 94 or run a lever gun in cowboy action have no idea the whole thing traces back to a fragile prototype that never even went into production.

"That damned Yankee rifle that they load on Sunday and shoot all week."

Fifty-two men with Henrys held off a Confederate battalion at Allatoona Pass. Next time someone at the range tells you rate of fire doesn't matter, that's your answer. The gap between 16 rounds and 7 rounds was the difference between holding a position and losing it.

Winchester was the first manufacturer to produce a civilian rifle chambered for smokeless propellants, and although the ".30-30" cartridge didn't appear on shelves until 1895, it became the first commercially available smokeless powder round for North American consumers.

The 1894 in .30-30 has been taking deer in this country for 130 years. You still see them on the rack at every estate sale and every LGS in the region — usually well-worn, usually still functional. Seven million produced, and they're still out there working.

In 1883, John Moses Browning began a partnership with Winchester that would last into the early 1900s and reshape the company's product line entirely.

The toggle-link action had a ceiling and Winchester knew it. Browning's vertically sliding locking block was the fix — strong enough for the .45-70 and the big buffalo rounds the 1876 couldn't handle. That's the Browning partnership in one sentence: he solved the problem Winchester couldn't solve itself.

What's the oldest Winchester you've personally shot, and was it still holding up the way it should?

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Read the full article in The Handbook → | By The Boise Gun Club Team