I figured I'd branch off the "Gun Questions" thread.
My HenryBig Boy .44 Magnum finally arrived!
It was test fired on 1/17/2012 so it is about as factory-fresh as they come.
They care a lot about safety (or not getting sued):
The black thing is a small gun sock I guess, to protect the brass:
I have various boxes of ammo for it:
Upper left are Hornady .44 Magnum LEVERevolution 225 grain hunting rounds. 1410 fps
Upper right are some Magtech .44 Special Cowboy Action Loads. All lead, 240 grain. 761 fps
Bottom right are some American Eagle .44 Magnum 240 grain jacketed hollow points. 1230 fps
Bottom left are Sellier & Bellot .44 Magnum 240 grain jacketed soft points. 1180 fps
The walnut stock is beautiful. My camera's pictures do not do it justice.
I have yet to shoot it, as it rained as soon as I brought it home. Then it stopped raining as soon as it got dark.
I have shot my father in law's Henry Big Boy .357 Magnum, and it is a sweet gun.
The lever action is really smooth. The brass-on-brass is slicker than steel-on-steel in every other lever action rifle.
Henry uses some special proprietary brass that is capable of withstanding the forces of these higher power pistol cartridges.
I don't remember, but there was a Henry in Unforgiven.
Unforgiven: The rifle Andy carries to arrest English Bob is a Winchester '66 "Yellowboy" with the fore-stock removed to resemble a first-model Henry.
Unforgiven script:
LITTLE BILL
"Jim, it just makes me sick!---open a window, will you---
BEAUCHAMP
Uh, Yeah.
(gets up and opens window)
LITTLE BILL
--to see a man carrying two pistols and a henry rifle and crying
like a damned baby."
(he throws the bowl of water out the window)
It's the gun that kicked the South's ass in the Civil War. Wikipedia quotes a Reb who called it "that damned Yankee rifle that they load on Sunday and shoot all week!"
Was it a Henry rifle in Silverado? Didn't Danny Glover carry it?
"Happy slaves are the worst enemies of freedom." - Marie Von Ebner
"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies..." - Orwell
On Sunday I went to my in-law's place to celebrate my mother-in-law's birthday.
I brought my .22, .380, .44 and .50.
We had targets placed a 20 yards (on a wood pile), 25 yards, 50 yards, and 75 yards. We couldn't go back any farther because we were shooting in the the woods and there was no clear path.
It was pretty cold out and the wind was blowing from right to left.
Hitting the 75 yard target was no problem with the .22 as it has a scope. I could *not* see that I hit it until I walked up to the target, so I just sort of shot around in the general area.
I did the same thing with the Henry Big Boy .44 lever action using the iron sights but managed to simply graze the edge of the tree at all four corners of the target.
I called them Hail Mary shots when I took them, as the .44 has never been sighted in.
I split open one of the logs from the wood pile that we shot at:
The one on the left is the .50 muzzle loader shooting a 300 grain sabot.
The one in the middle is the .44 Henry shooting a 240 grain jacketed soft point.
The one on the right is the Ruger LCP (.380) shooting a 90 grain full metal jacket.
Here's me with my new .44
The picture was taken at 11:10 at night and Daniel Boone threw a tomahawk at my crotch.
Paul wrote:Hitting the 75 yard target was no problem with the .22 as it has a scope. I could *not* see that I hit it until I walked up to the target, so I just sort of shot around in the general area.
At 500 meters, with an M-16A2 with old iron "peep" sights, when your eye is focused on the front sight post, a (small) man sized target isn't much more than a slightly gray blur in the middle of a slightly bigger white blur.
Still got 10/10 hits last time I qualified.
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."
