"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?

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