I HAVE been a Winchester lever-action fan for as long as I can remember. I guess it all started when I was a boy watching Saturday morning cowboy films. Back then I referred to the rifles and revolvers used by my heroes simply as “cowboy guns”. I later learnt from the Buffalo Bill Annual I received every Christmas that the guns were actually Winchesters and Colts. By my late teens Buffalo Bill had been replaced by The Gun Digest and I was soon hooked by the fascinating history of firearms. Throughout my adult life I have snapped up every opportunity to shoot as many historical weapons as possible – in particular “cowboy guns”. Now, many, many years later, I have fired just about every Colt six-shooter and Winchester lever-action rifle ever made… or so I thought.
Just recently I was shown a Winchester lever-action rifle I knew absolutely nothing about – and which
