I had fun with an old Winchester 1886 today.

[EQGuy]

I shot our local fun silhouette match today. We shoot the regular high power rifle silhouette match course of fire with the exception that all shots are fired at 200 meters. The chickens are full size and the pigs, turkeys and rams are reduced in size to mimic their full distance. Every other month we shoot a 40 shot and 20 shot match. All shots are fired offhand. When we shoot a 20 shoot match we can shoot 2 rifles and we have a featured rifle on the 20 shot matches. This month was a 20 shoot match and the featured rifle was any lever action.
This month I brought my 1886 Winchester deluxe takedown in .33WCF to shoot featured rifle. My other rifle is a custom Remington 700 in 6mmXC and it has a 12X Leupold target scope on it. The 1886 only has its original barrel sights. I was quite pleased to win the featured rifle match with a score of 9 out of 20 with the old rifle. I only hit 7 out of 20 with the Remington. I had to use Kentucky windage on the old rifle as it was hitting to the left at 200 meters. I have to admit that I had a few lucky shots thrown in for good measure but a lucky shot is a good shot and it counts fore score.

 

[Bat Guano]

Nice. I've had two, but they were pretty rough--a .40-82 and one converted to .33 WCF. Unfortunately I didn't appreciate them enough and didn't restore them properly as I should have.

I worked on two for the local museum about ten years ago. One was a very fancy grade special order one that lettered.I forget the caliber, but all it needed was a very mild, proper cleanup. However, it had one of the set triggers on it, and boy, was that a tricky setup to work on.

The other was a much-abused .45-70 with good provenance and interesting history--basically, a wreck. Broken tang, parts missing, you name it. I farmed out the tang welding, but made it a personal project, because the owner was a real character and immensely interesting. Although the bore looked like a sewer pipe (thanks to corrosive priming and decades of neglect) I deemed it safe to fire with BP duplex loads. Accuracy was nonexistent, but it functioned well. I figured that it probably hadn't been fired in 70 years or more.

Old John Browning designed one helluva good rifle in the '86 Winchester!