Memories of the .30-30 - Part 1 - The Rifles

[ke4sky]

Memories of the .30-30 - The “Appalachian Assault Rifle”

(This article appeared in the Cast Bullet Association's Fouling Shot magazine.

A favorite of lawmen and deer slayers alike, .30-30 lever-guns defended our Home Front in two World Wars, fed a then-mostly rural nation and still have utility for sport and home protection.

My childhood wasn’t different from others of the Baby Boomer generation. Northern Virginia after World War II was an odd mix of The Walton’s and American Graffiti. The rural south still existed where we now call it “outside the beltway.” When Dad bought our Annandale house in 1954, State Route 236, aka “Little River Turnpike” was a 2-lane country road between Alexandria and Fairfax Courthouse, which wasn’t yet a city. Our neighborhood was surrounded by dairy farms, hardwood forests were full of game, and we shot my brother’s open-sighted Remington Model 511 .22 bolt-action out the upstairs bedroom window to kill woodchucks raiding Dad’s vegetable garden. Our neighbor was an avid hunter who let us watch him butcher deer and feed scraps to his two German shorthaired pointers. When I turned 12, he showed me his deer rifle, a Winchester Model 94 in.30-30. Like any kid who watched TV cowboys of that era, I was enthralled!

The opening, in 1963, of Interstate 495, the now-infamous “Beltway,” put “my world” on a fast track towards destruction. By the time I became old enough for Dad to allow me to have a rifle of my own, the fields and woods around us were rapidly falling victim to the developers’ bulldozers. Within a few years we were immersed in suburbia, strip malls, and the Cold War. Our shooting activity moved indoors to Fort Belvoir. This meant that my first rifle would be a target .22, the targets paper, and life would never be the same.

Summer visits to our uncle’s West Virginia farm prolonged our sanity. There was no TV, so instead we learned about reality. Meat doesn’t come from a seed planted under cellophane-covered meat trays in the grocery. Veggies don’t grow in the can. “If you eat, thank a Farmer.” Outdoor recreation is a celebration of God’s Creation which rewards you with peace, solitude, time for contemplation and rest after completing a day’s cheerful labor.

Uncle Bill told us the truth about guns. His stories were very different from what we saw on TV. His .30-30 Winchester Model 94 had guarded coal trains from Nazi saboteurs, kept order during mine labor disputes, ended the suffering of sick or injured farm animals, and helped feed starving neighbors during the Great Depression. This rather plain rifle had been carried by a humble farmer, who never expected to see armed combat again after returning from the Pacific after WWII. But, when deputized to serve on a sheriff’s posse he had to fire it to take out a “bad man who tried to kill my friend.”

Recalling the event invoked no pride, but a simple wisdom explaining that “grown ups” acknowledge that both good and evil forces exist in our world, which sometimes compel honorable men to make difficult choices which are necessary to protect our country and those whom we love. A suppressed slight tremor in his voice reflected deep conviction as he explained that our Second Amendment isn’t just about hunting, gun collecting and target shooting. Guns aren’t adult toys, but serious tools. Too many shooters today have forgotten that simple fact.

While my older brother, Rick and I had shot .22s and knew fundamentals, firing our first center-fire, watching the .30-30 explode a pumpkin, accompanied by the smack of steel butt-plate against T-shirted shoulder and ringing in our adolescent ears made a lasting impression. Sadly, a .30-30 lever-gun would not find a spot in my closet until I reached middle age. A few years ago a circa-1942 Winchester Model 94 carbine appeared at an estate sale, which brought back memories as if it were yesterday. So, I had to have it.

My choice of firearms in early adulthood was influenced by NRA target shooting on a high school rifle team, coached by WWII and Korean War veterans. My first high-power rifle was an 03-A3 Springfield, later replaced by a match M1 while in college. Plentiful, DCM surplus Ball M2 meant that I didn’t need to start hand loading or casting bullets until the cheap GI ammo dried up. My first article “Cast Bullets in the M1 Rifle” was published in American Rifleman in 1967. That’s when I first met Frank Marshall.

My shooting mentors were retired military officers who were also target shooters. But Frank was our devil’s advocate, the contrarian who provided a practical balance that kept us in touch with reality. “While you guys are arguing that minute-of-angle crapola, do you see that buck over there laughing at you?” Sighting-In Days at Fairfax Rod & Gun Club brought out the curmudgeons and lively discussion topics. The .30-30 Winchester was a favorite deer camp subject, because the target bolt-gunner’s who favored .30-‘06s were always quick to ballyhoo the lever-guns. While Frank owned bolt guns and shot them as well as any man, he remained a staunch defender of the lever-action in the deer woods. Salient arguments I remember are summarized:

The .30-30 is ubiquitous. Guns and ammo are sold everywhere. A rural lawman, farmer or forester could find .30-30s at any crossroads grocery. (A fed I trust still advises his field agents not to carry any gun of a caliber they cannot buy ammo for at Wal-Mart). Since I found the Sleepy Creek range in WV I’ve bought several .30-30s just to exploit the THOUSANDS of rounds of brass gleaned over the years. Lever guns remain popular in rural areas because they are cheap, plentiful, and familiar and they work. In remote regions a .30-30 is the only high-power rifle many people have heard of.

It Offers Practical Hunting Accuracy. Grouping of the average lever-action .30-30 is not spectacular, but is adequate for the utilitarian. Groups of 3” to 4” at 100 yards are normal for open sights. Peep sights will knock an inch off of that. I’d advise today’s 30-30 user to get a receiver sight. Post-war rifles are already drilled and tapped for them. A peep sight provides useful improvement over traditional open sights, because it is faster in snap shooting and obstructs less of the target than open buckhorns. Use a threaded target aperture in bright light and simply unscrew the disk at twilight.

Frank liked the practical simplicity of open sights, stressing that a .30-30 was a “short range” (meaning less than 200 yards in the Infantry sense) rifle. Open sights should be zeroed so that when using a “fine bead” (drawn down into the notch) factory loads strike 3 inches high at 100 yards. This provides a 150-yard, point-blank range, which defines the realistic limit for factory loads fired from a typical 3 minute-of-angle carbine.

A “coarse bead” hold was a common long-range expedient a hundred years ago when the .30-30 was our first flat-trajectory, smokeless powder big game rifle. Here the bead is centered between the points of the semi-buckhorn, while the flat front sight base is raised to bridge the gap across the lower notch. This provides a useful long range zero at maximum effective range, which works out to 200 meters with my 94 Winchester and 1893 Marlin, hitting a 12” steel gong with factory loads and a center-of-mass hold.

Combat Accurate, If You’re a Cowboy. As a law enforcement or home defense gun Frank compared his Winchester to an SKS, calling it his “Appalachian Assault Rifle.” Lever guns today have the advantage of a non-threatening, familiar appearance which “doesn’t scare the natives. In 19th Century close quarter battle, lever actions had tactical advantages, offering a large magazine capacity and rapidity of fire compared to single-shot breechloaders and early European bolt-guns. The Ottoman cavalry and Pancho Villa agreed. A bolt-rifle magazine cannot be topped off without taking it momentarily out of the fight (Unless it’s a Krag!-Editor), whereas you can shove more rounds through a lever-action loading gate whenever you need to. On the frontier and against bandits in dusty border towns a lever gun was “as simple as it ever got,” said Frank.

Purists Debate Winchester vs. Marlin If you must scope a lever gun the Marlin enables optics to be mounted low, over the bore, where they belong for snap-shooting. But in snow-shoe country when a rifle would not be protected in a saddle scabbard, hunters liked the Marlin’s solid top receiver and side ejection port because they kept rain, snow and tree debris out of the action. The Marlin breech-bolt, lever and ejector removed easily to enable cleaning from the breech, avoiding wearing out the muzzle crown, as happened to many Winchesters. While it is true that the Winchester action is more exposed to the elements, Winchester fans like to point out that say its open-top makes it easier to inspect the chamber, pry out a stuck case, clear a jam or debris. Doing so in the Marlin action requires disassembly. No big deal say Marlin lovers. They do it every time they clean and can do so in the field with a Scout knife, when required. “Winchesters should be issued to natives or Neanderthals lacking the mechanical aptitude of an Army Private to maintain their field equipment,’” Frank said.

Scope vs. Iron Sights. Franked conceded that a scope was indeed a help for old guys with poor eyesight to reduce sighting errors, but he still liked to quip “the only sighting error you’ve got is that extra head-space between your ears!… the buffalo were decimated, Indians wiped out and two World Wars fought with rifles that barely do 3 minutes of angle… What are you shooting at, cockroaches?”
Frank never had much faith in collimators and was highly skeptical of rifle scopes unless the maker’s name was German. Most zero problems seen during Sighting-In Days were with neophytes using discount-store, variable-power scopes, in high see-through mounts which defeated the whole purpose of having a scope on a snap-shooting rifle, and never zeroed beyond “bore sighting.” Iron sights are simple and “best for conscript troops and farm boys,” Frank said. “Once zeroed you can forget the darned things until you get too old to see them.” (At age 60 Frank finally did scope his deer rifle – Leupold was a German, wasn’t he?).

Pre-WWII Square bolt, conventionally rifled Marlins. Soon after Winchester introduced the .30 Winchester Center-Fire (WCF), in 1896, Marlin, started offering its Model 1893 (previously available chambered for the .32-40 and .38-55), for the “new” .30-30 Marlin, thus avoiding use of the Winchester trademark, and following familiar black powder naming conventions, using the caliber and the smokeless powder charge in grains. About 900,000 Model 1893s were made between 1893 and 1935.

In 1936 manufacturing modernization resulted in the Model 36. Both the 1893 and Model 36 rifles have a square breech-bolt cross section and conventional 4-groove barrels with ten-inch twist of rifling, similar to Springfield and Krag rifles of their era. The Model 1893 pictured was produced originally as a .32-40 and was factory refitted with a Model 36 .30-30 barrel shortly after WWII. While mis-matched for collector purposes, it made possible an affordable, traditional American hunting rifle which fit my needs. The 4-groove Marlins shoot cast bullets well, but you will need to slug your barrel because groove diameters as large as .310-.311” are not unusual. The Models 1893 and 36 are entirely safe at normal .30-30 pressures, but are not suited for hotter wildcats some people try on the post-war Model 336 and Guide Guns.

Post-WWII Round Bolt 336s. After World War II Marlin again modernized its manufacturing process for lever-action rifles. The Model 336, introduced in 1948, has a bolt of round cross section which is machined from bar stock, and is hard chrome plated. The carrier was re-designed to produce a smoother-working action. The thicker receiver is heavier-walled and stronger than the Winchester. Microgroove barrels came into common use with the introduction of the Model 336 and remain so, except in the current production Marlin Cowboy rifles which have Ballard-type conventional rifling.

Microgroove rifling was first used in the Pedersen Device for the M1903 Springfield rifle. It used a rifled chamber insert, which matched the rifling pitch of the Springfield barrel. Microgroove rifling enabled jacketed bullets to attain full velocity and normal gyroscopic stability without being damaged upon entering the normal rifle bore. After World War II during development of the Model 336, Microgroove rifling was found well adapted to the then-new process of “button rifling” because it reduced tool driving force. Marlin exploited this technology to build a product identity around the Microgroove trademark. While it is commonly believed that Microgroove barrels don’t shoot cast bullets as accurately as conventional rifling, they do fine with suitable loads and work best with hard, long-bodied bullets having a short bore-riding nose, large enough to properly fit in somewhat larger bore and groove diameters.

Heavy vs. light bullets. Frank said that New England old timers when he was a kid in the 1930s thought the .303 Savage with its 190-gr. bullet at about 1950 f.p.s. was a better deer killer than the lighter 150 or 160-gr. bullets used in the .30-30, which lacked penetration. The 170-gr. bullets came out later as a “solution to a non-existent problem… because hind end of a deer is to eat and not to shoot.” Ellis Lea was a West Virginia lawman before going into the Army during WWII. He added that early .30-30s bullets had thin, flimsy jackets and great gobs of exposed pure lead at the nose which deformed if you stared too long at them. Fragile, fragmenting bullets were great anti-personnel loads, but tore up meat and wouldn’t exit either a man or a deer. The 150-gr. Winchester Silvertip was never a satisfactory hunting load, but a fragile, fragmenting bullet, developed for law enforcement use, to the reduce risk of over-penetration. In pre-WWII days before the term “patrol rifle” had been coined, a cop's “car gun” still meant a lever-action, rather than a military-style “black rifle.”

End of Part 1

[RKrodle]

Welcome aboard and a good article. Did you write it?

[ke4sky]

Yup. I'll post some more.

[JDL]

Please do, very good reading!
JDL

[gamekeeper]

Great post. Many thanks and welcome to the camp fire.

[Nath]

I enjoyed that, cool

Nath.

[reo]

Awesome. Thank you.

[tman]

welcome, and thank you for the article

[Griff]

Very good, although I disagree about the 336 being stonger than the 94 an that 150s don't penetrate... but I'm a youngster and don't have 1st hand experience w/pre- WWII bullets.

Thanks for joinin' us; welcome.

[w30wcf]

Ed,
THANK YOU for your very informative article on the classic .30-30 rifles. I presently have 6 leverguns so chambered...4 Winchesters and 2 Marlins. Barrel lengths represented:20", 24", 26"

w30wcf