Read the article By Rick Hacker found in the October 19, 2010 American Rifleman online magazine.
"Just as there are extraordinary individuals who have, in the words of Hamlet, “shuffled off this mortal coil” to become enshrined in immortality, certain guns have transcended their physical trappings of wood and steel to become legendary in the annals of firearm history. Such a gun is the Winchester Model 1894, John Moses Browning’s ingenious culmination of the lever-action rifle combined with a tubular magazine.
"While the Winchester ’73 may have been ‘the gun that won the West,” the Model 94 was the gun that galloped past the closing days of the frontier and maintained Winchester’s lever-action lead throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. That historic ride lasted for 112 years, thus making the Model 94 one of the longest continuously produced rifles in the world. But it was abruptly reined-up short on Jan. 16, 2006, with the announcement that the Winchester factory in New Haven, Conn., would be closing within three months. With more than 7 million guns produced, the Winchester 94 was to be no more."
A few other interesting exerpts from the full story are below:
"Nearly five years have transpired since the closing of the Winchester factory, and this limited edition pays tribute to the New England shirt maker whose name has come to personify the first successful lever-action repeater. But the saga of the Model 94 has been a much longer journey, one that began when Oliver Winchester paid John Browning $15,000 —the same amount he had received for his Model 1886 and 1892 patents—for rights to manufacture what was destined to become the first repeating rifle adapted to smokeless-powder cartridges.
"Because of this, I felt compelled to see how this reincarnated Winchester handled on the range. Although its 5-pound trigger pull was not conducive to the utmost accuracy, from a solid rest and using Winchester 170-grain Power-Points, I was able to print a 1.5-inch, 75-yard five-shot group."
A few other interesting exerpts from the full story are below:
