Sorry for the non-horizontal photo, but evidently my fancy-schmancy iPhone SE can't "rotate" photos without me taking an on-line course or something, even though it can apply fifty-seven different 'enhancements' to the photo in terms of subtle lighting etc...
Then again, my Mac's "photos" program doesn't seem to want to allow cropping of photos, so I had to choose...
I know - someday I need to learn Apple-eze...
Anyway, I was pleased with the velocity, and for a gun I had to trade one and a half AR's for, I wanted to be pleased.
Accuracy, I can't say - I got a 2x3" group at 50 yards with the five shots, but was using the (really nice) 'buckhorn sights'. Problem is my eyes aren't young anymore, so I'll be spoiling the 'nice classic lines' of the levergun with an optic...
A few years back a friend was telling me I was stupid for liking leverguns, as they are "so inaccurate you can't hit anything". He had been shooting a 18" heavy barreled AR of mine, which with good handholds and some luck, could put five shots under a dime at 100 yards, and ten shots under a nickel most of the time. It has a 5-20x scope on it. I had just sighted in a Marlin XLR 30-30 with handholds that could shoot 5 shots into a 50 cent piece at 100 yards - it ALSO had a 5-20x scope on it at the time, just for load development. So - I challenged him that I thought the reason he was convinced leverguns were inaccurate was partly that some are sloppy and inaccurate, but that the bigger issue was likely the sights that were on the guns he was used to. I went back to the house and returned to the range bench with the Marlin.
His own bolt action was a 243 Win in a Remington 700, with a 4-16x scope, he described as 'prairie dog medicine'. I let him shoot my handholds in the Marlin XLR 30-30 off a rest and he actually shot a smaller 5-shot group than I did - about 3/4" to my 1-1/4". Of course he said the gun was 'an exception' (and perhaps it is - Marlin fancied them up and 'free-floated' the magazine tube a bit). Normally, I don't like to take off and remount scopes (my son used to drive me crazy swapping scopes on MY guns...
) but I got out a hex wrench and removed the AR's scope, flipping up the nice MagPul backup peeps, and said - now - shoot me a better group. Of course he couldn't - the best either of us (both over 50 at the time) could do was about 4-5 inches at 100 yards. For one thing, the front post is probably wider than the 8x11" paper our targets were printed on...for that reason, I've never figured out how the guys who use iron sights can shoot such small groups, when the 'group' is going to need to be an eighth of the width of the front sight to be decent... Anyhow, I think he realized that his 'life experience' with bolt action rifles was pretty much limited to bottle-neck cartridges (high velocity = flat shooting = less vertical error due to range), and exclusively with SCOPED firearms, whereas the few leverguns he'd shot were equipped with pretty crummy barrel-mounted 'drift-adjustable' notch sights. Even a good set of aperture sights with a fine gold bead up front (like my Marlins usually wind up with eventually) is better than what most people leave on their leverguns. For younger people, perhaps a good-quality 'buckhorn' or whatever open sight is enough, but as they age, likely they'd do better with a good aperture like the Williams or Lyman, and a fine bead, or even a 'globe' front sight, but when we get to geezer-age, it is hard to beat a good optic, whether it is a glass one with appropriate magnification for the task-at-hand, or even a good quality (non-blurry) red-dot or holographic sight.
Anyhow, if the Henry weren't so pretty, it would already be my woods-walking gun, but that honor still falls to my dinged and scratched 357 Mag Rossi 'Trapper'.
Come to think of it, I suppose geezerism is not only the reason I will probably scope the Henry, or at least put a Williams FP on it, but it is ALSO the reason I can't do much right with the iPhone or Mac....
