Most Fun With Your Lever Gun??

[w30wcf]

Fellow lever action enthusiasts,

Just curious what you have the most fun with shooting your lever actions(?).  I know that  just working the lever, cycling shells, shooting and ejecting the empty hulls is fun in itself.

For me, I have the most fun  long distance steel target shooting with them. Most of my lever actions wear tang sights and I have found that my  pistol cartridge chambered rifles (.357, .44 W.C.F., .45 Colt) will do a fine job on the NRA steel javelina target at 327 yards off the muzzle using loads in the 1,200 f.p.s. range.  This replicates the velocity of most of the early lever action cartridges.
 
It is a heck of a lot of fun to lob those big, heavy bullets out there, watching them  impact in the earth on close misses. But when things come together, the target disappears from view, followed by the "bong" report  of the bullet from your lever gun finding steel!  With a little practice, shooting from a bench using both elbows, you would be amazed at how often you could connect on that 9" high x 22" long target at that distance.  

After firing, there is about a 1 second delay until the bullet arrives and if  your shot is true, about another second until the sound of the bullet finding steel reaches your ears.  Nope, nothing else quite like it!

I have even stretched the barrels further.........to the steel Ram target at 500 meters.  Not as many hits out there, but they do surprisingly well, especially the .45 Colt Cowboy using the Gould 330gr. hollow point .45-70 bullet.

By comparison,  the .30-30's  are almost like "ray" guns. Still a lot of fun, but almost too easy. Of course all that changes when you start shooting from the offhand position...................

w30wcf

[Boss Kongoni]

I was thinking about buying  the LS Puma .454 carbine. How flat shooting are hot .45P+ loads @  100yrds. This is new territory to me, I appreciate the info. Thank you

[w30wcf]

Boss Kongoni,
At over 2,000 f.p.s.  a 250 gr. .45 caliber bullet would be around 1" high @ 50 yards when on @ 100.  In other words, pretty flat shooting.


Interesting about shooting in a Watermelon patch.  Shooting at different distances from offhand and having the target(s) vaporize would  be good practice and a lot of fun!!  Sounds neat!  

I saw Herb Parsons, Winchester's exhibition shooter back in the 50's vaporize a watermelon with a .270 on a video.  Seems he had a few sticks of dynamite inside to make "watermelon juice" as he called it.  
It sure did!



w30wcf

[Dand]

My most fun time was when at 16 I pulled the trigger on my W 94 and a moose fell over at something beyond 150 yards.

[Dutch4122]

To me, everything about Leverguns is fun!  Fun to shoot, fun to carry, fun to reload for, etc.

The other thing that is really fun has to do with the kind of situation that Dand mentioned.  When you make a shot beyond 100 yards with your favorite peep sighted Levergun and all your hunting aquaintences that have the latest short-maggie super-zappers miss routinely miss shots under 100 yards with their 3-10x scopes.  That type of rig belongs on the power lines and open fields, not in the woods!

[Advocate]

Previoulsy, I used a vintage Marlin M-39 Mountie carbine .22 LR for plinking.  It was an old, smooth well worn carbine I acquired 2n'd hand. IT had a heavier barrel than thenewly manufactured models and had a bit of a muzzzle heavy sensation that I like. I particularly liked taking non-shooters out (girl friends, etc.)  and allowing them to use it. Most enjoyed it very much since it had no recoil and it was a firearm they could readily identify  having seen lever actions in countless western movies.  

I also enjoyed taking an empty .22 LR ammo box, putting a rock in it, tossing it out 15 feet or so, and then  bouncing it along with rapid fire  from the Marlin until the box was totally perforated.  This is not a particularly difficult shooting feat, but it's very impressive to the unitiated.  Then I would teach them how to do it and it was enormous fun for them to bounce along an empty ammo box, a tin can or whatever.  The .22 LR had no recoil or blast to speak of and was very user friendly.

 (Note: The best way to convert an anti-gunner is to take him or her shooting.)

Now I use an M-94 .44 mag Trapper for shooting at conveniently located  indoor ranges in the metropolitan area where I live. It is the biggest round permissible and it gives the sensation of shooting a real rifle unlike the .22 LR which requires very little skill to shoot accurately.

I like to use a .75"  black dot (a peel off avery label) as a target at from 17.5 to 25 yards, depending on the individuall range. Mounted  with a  2.5X scope and using factory PMC .44 Mag loads and .44 Specials the M-94 is very accurate.   I have not yet begun handloading for the gun, but anticipate doing so shortly.  

The lever action Trapper chambered for a powerful certire pistol round allows me to maintain centerfire shooting skills by practicing in nearby indoor ranges  without the need to make an all day expedition to a distant  outdoor range.

[Mikey]

you're gonna shoot fruit, make it a challenge.  One  of our pastimes here (for weak minded types like me) is to shoot old apples off the branches so the deer can get them.  I just make certain I have a good backdrop so nothing goes over the hill.  If done with a 22, most of the apple drops to the ground and bambi gets a bit intoxicated on the ripened fruit.  On occasion I leave some fruit hanging around for too long and as it starts to go bad I let it 'ripen' to the 'fermentin' stage and feed them to the deer.  Every seen a drunk whitetail?  

Watermelons are too big - use oranges or grapefruit - tougher to hit.  My favorite fun lever is my 444 but dang it, I just can't seem to find a load for it that will keep heavy bullet velocites to around 12-1300'/sec, for easy shooting.  I'm tempted to find another Big Bore in 444 and see if the dang thing will shoot the Holy Black with straight cast bullets.  Otherwise, it seems to prefer gas checks but I don't know how they would work with black powder.  

Haven't chatted with you in a while.  Hope all is well and that you're surviving the winter.  The Ice Age here is getting boring.  Mikey.

[DB Leath]

Cowboy action shootin of course....If you havent tried it man ur a missing out.

[w30wcf]

A belated thank you to everyone for sharing their lever action fun times.  

Testing one's own capability making their lever action cycle quickly with accuracy is a lot of fun. After a recent Cowboy Silhouette match we decided to pit 3 man teams against each other in an event that we call "tres banditos" to see who could down their 5 steel targets the fastest. The steel javelina standing at 66 yards were chosen.

At the command "fire", all six rifles sounded off almost simultaniously. The race was on as was the pressure to shoot too quickly! Ideally it would be over in a matter of seconds if the three team members hit their first three steel targets with their first shot(s), quickly cycled their lever action rifles and hit the remaining targets with their next round in the magazines. WELL, THAT DIDN"T HAPPEN, at least not on that day.

The shooting was fast and furious and several times only 1 of the 5 targets remained with all three "banditos" firing repeatedly at it until, it too, disappeared in a cloud of dust!

I definitely need some practice on shooting quickly, but not too quickly, to maintain some sort of reasonable accuracy.

All in all it was a lot of fun!

w30wcf

[Lloyd Smale]

load up my little .35 with 158gr. cast bullets and 10 grains of unique and go plinking.

[NM Brushpopper]

I'm the new kid.

Tired of sittin' on the fence post...this one is easy....New Mexico backcountry on a good horse, with a Winchester in the scabbard and something to shoot at........that is cowboy action shootin' to us!

[Graycg]

Throwing soda cans over the transom of the ship and plinking at them with my rusty old $80 buck,  :grin: Marlin 94 in 357 Mag with a Williams foolproof receiver sight.  You move, the targets move, splashes, hits usually sink the can outright.  Now that's fun and unconventional!!

regards from sea,
 Graycg :wink: