Would love to see a nice thread develop on the Winchester Model 54.
This handy and very accurate little rifle was acquired from my good friend Cres Lawson who was a long time shooting bud, 50 years older than I. He bought it brand new from William Crites gun shop in San Antonio, Texas after Christmas in 1928, just before he and his dad left for their annual month long deer hunt at their ranch in Mexico. Cres wanted an accurate and handy rifle for use on horseback. He told me that Mr. Crites had a dozen or so of the Model 54 .30-30 carbines on the rack in the shop that were received on clearance from Winchester. They were marked $30 and Cres traded a Savage Model 20 bolt action .250-3000 and $10 that he'd borrowed from his mother for this rifle. He mounted a Redfield aperture sight on it which makes it so much more effective in use.
He shot two deer with it right off, the day after their arrival, a couple of bucks browsing. The first dropped in its tracks and the second only looked at his fallen comrade and kept browsing so Cres took it as well, its body falling across the first one. After 12 years and quite a few deer, he last used it in deer season of 1940 in Gillespie County, Texas, one more taking two deer at the same time.
At the end of January 1929, the day before they were to leave on the train to return from Mexico to their home in San Antonio, Cres took this little rifle and rode over to an adjoining ranch which was also owned by an American to say goodbye. The fellow said that he'd been seeing a large buck in a field in late afternoon and would Cres like to take it. Cres was up for it so they saddled up a couple of the rancher's horses and rode out to the field. Sure enough when they arrived this great buck was in the field. Cres asked the rancher if the horse was fine with a rifle being discharged from the saddle. The rancher said yes so Cres essayed a shot at the buck, killing him. Cres didn't get the satisfaction of observing the bullet strike because, as he said:
"The next thing I knew I was completely prone in mid air with my rifle sailing off towards Jones."
Scrambling to his feet as the horse continued to buck away, he complained to the rancher who was laughing uproariously.
"I thought you said I could shoot from astride your horse".
"Well you can...once" came the reply as the rancher howled with glee, the tears streaming down his cheek.
Cres looked around for his new rifle, chagrined to see it stobbed muzzle down in the soft earth with it's butt stock sticking straight up at the sky.
They field dressed the buck, loaded him up on a hired hand's convenient mule and headed back towards home, the rancher just completely dissolved in laughter.
This region was mostly jungle and they were traversing a portion of it to return to the ranch house. The rancher was still chuckling and poking fun at Cres but not paying attention to his horse which had veered off the jungle path and stopped abruptly in front of some thick brush. The rancher kicked up the horse to force him on through the brush and suddenly disappeared from Cres' view. It was as the earth had swallowed him up.
Immediately though Cres became aware of a tremendous thrashing and flailing about along with a monumental barrage of cussin' all coming from out of the ground. It seems that the rancher inattentively compelled his horse to dive into one of the many sink holes common to the locale. He sent his horse headlong into a 12 foot deep pit full of tangled brush.
Cres felt it was some justice for the treatment he'd received earlier and razzed the rancher for the remainder of the ride back to the hacienda.
This rifle has the smoothest bore I've ever seen. One may fire several boxes of jacketed bullets through it and clean it in a jiffy with no copper fouling to contend with. With careful sighting off the bench rest I've obtained several five-shot groups of 1 1/2-inch, 1 1/3-inch, and even 1 1/4-inch at 100 yards. In hunting I've taken deer from 25 yards to 130 yards with it. I've always used Sierra 170 grain flat nosed bullets.
I assumed it'd be tailor-made for use with spitzer bullets since it is fed from the box magazine but it wants no part of them. I've tried seating bullets out and also different seating depths but it won't shoot them like it will the 150 and 170 grain flat nose bullets made for the lever action .30-30s. It'll even handle the 125 grain flat nose that Sierra made (may still make them) to useful velocity and with good accuracy.
It'd likely be a great cast bullet shooter but I've not explored that aspect of shooting it.
The Model 54 was not popular in .30-30 and the carbine is an uncommon variation so the combination is quite scarce. Cres told me that the only other Model 54 .30-30 carbines he ever saw were in the hands of some guards in a Mexican prison in the mid 1930s. He said their rifles were in absolutely wretched condition. I never got around to asking him what he was doing in a Mexican prison.
I must have seen one of these rifles at a Dallas gun show some years ago. It was gray metal and rust with a broken and repaired stock that looked all dried and shrunken. The integral front sight was worn down to a nub and would have been useless for sighting the rifle. The rear sight was missing it's elevator. The bore had that newly plowed field look about it, all ravaged by corrosive priming and neglect. That's the only other .30-30 chambered Winchester Model 54 carbine I've ever seen.
