The Henry long Ranger and this has got to be the most feature-rich lever-action rifle that I’ve ever seen in my entire life. There is a lot to be excited about this thing.
What’s so special about the Henri long Ranger as opposed to every other lever action rifle on the market really, what it comes down to you is Henry was very thoughtful and very intentional with their design on this thing and they really wanted to come up with good modern solutions to the historical issues that people have with lever action guns. So I’m gonna go through every one of those issues and show you how Henry fixed it with this rifle.
This here is a Marlin model 1894 CS BL and this is my cowboy assault rifle. This rifle is just a blast to shoot. It’s step four that it has every issue that people have with a lever-action gun. The first of which obviously is that lever guns don’t shoot modern calibers because of the design that load from a magazine tube so they can’t use pointy ammunition so you’re limited to those old-school cowboy loads.
The particular one is chambered in 357 Magnum and you know of course you can get them in 30-30 45-70 45 long colt and they’re very effective powerful rounds but they’re not the most accurate and they’re not the cheapest and most plentiful anymore.
So the first thing that Henry did is when they designed the long Ranger. They designed it for modern rifle calibers, this particular one is chambered in two to three which is one of my favorite calibers of all time. These rifles are also available in 243 Winchester, 308 Winchester and even 6/5 cream or if you really want to get out there and reach out and touch something.
You might be thinking that i just told you that lever actions can’t be in modern rifle calibers. Especially pointy calibers like a two to three well that right.
There brings me to the next issue that I want to point out that the Henry fixes now. You’ll notice on this Marlin that the magazine tube comes all the way out to here and that’s so that you can store all the way up to six rounds of 357 Magnum, eight rounds of 38 specials. So fairly high capacity which is one of the advantages to a lever gun over a bolt-action, but you’re limited to just your cowboy calibers and while it is high-capacity and you can do follow-up shots really fast reloading, it is terrible and so the way Henry fixed both those problems of being able to load modern ammunition and have faster reloads is they made it magazine fed. The magazine on this particular one holds 5+1 round so the Marlin holds six rounds of 357 Magnum, this one holds five rounds of 2+3. I don’t know about you but I would take 5 rounds of two to three over six rounds of 357 Magnum every day. So capacity is almost there but more importantly way faster reloads, you shoot your five rounds off.
You’re out stick another mag back in even the fastest Cowboy Action shooters and the world’s would be hard-pressed to load five rounds into their lever guns that fast. I haven’t practiced doing this quickly at all but that is pretty stinkin fast four reloaded five rounds. Because Henry did away with that magazine tube that really opened it up for Henry to fix some other issues that people have.
The inherent problem with tube magazine-fed lever-action rifles is that accuracy suffers because you can’t have a free floated barrel right well with a Henry Long Ranger. That’s just simply not the case. This barrel is actually free floated from the handguard so whether you’re shooting off-hand from a bipod, arresting it on, a rock or sandbag or something, your point of impact isn’t gonna change at all. Furthermore, people typically don’t like shooting from prone with a lever action because of how far you have to swing that lever forward in order to reload well with the Henry Long Ranger. It has a completely different action inside which we’ll talk about in a little bit but as a result you don’t have to fling, that thing nearly as far forward to get your next round in the chamber which makes shooting from a bipod, not an issue at all.
Free-floating a barrel is not the only thing that affects accuracy and actually one of the reasons why people have preferred bolt actions over lever actions for a long time is because of the bolt. Bolt actions with that 6 lug rotary bolt that really crams the bolt and the bullet way up into that free-floating barrel. That’s where you get your real accuracy from so Henry actually rigged up the action with this with a geared 6 lug bolt that twists up into a nice secure consistent lockup inside the barrel and the result is along with a tapered heavy barrel.
This thing shoots so accurately, I’m by no means a match-grade shooter and I definitely don’t ever use match grade ammo because it’s way too expensive and I just want to go out and have fun with this thing. But even I just using standard Wolff gold 2-3 was able to shoot a five-shot group that was sub to MOA and if you discount a flyer for me pulling one which I know that I did and discounting another flyer for not using a match grade ammo, there are three shots that are sub MOA with this thing.
When people put match-grade ammo on this thing, they get sub MOA accuracy no problem with it. This gun definitely shoots better than I do and the object that I have on it definitely shoots better than I do. If you haven’t read my article on the Bushnell Forge of two and a half by fifteen. My buddy was able to wring steel up to nine hundred yards with this optic on his 65 feet more,, So here to pick up one of these in 65 Creedmoor that’s the kind of distance you’d be able to shoot with an optic like this and I think when I reviewed at Bushnell was selling these things for like $850. But now you can get them for like less than $400 so this is an excellent optic if you want to get into the world of super long-range shooting.
Naturally as is the case with pretty much every lever-action gun. The trigger on this thing is just beautifully crisp. I don’t know how many times something to do that just feels so good. It just breaks like glass, it’s got to be like a three-pound pull maybe three and a half pound pull. I don’t think I’d want anything lighter than that. Maybe if you are a metric good shooter and you are gonna be shooting out to a thousand yards, with one of these things you might want to have a trigger job done to get it down to two pounds. But for me about three pounds, it’s sweet, I can’t wait to get back to the range to shoot this thing again as for the fit and finish on this thing. I mean aside from it being manufactured to extremely tight tolerances and getting that firm lock up and of course that amazing trigger pull, it’s made out of American walnut and they put this really beautiful satin Sheen finish on it which is awesome doesn’t reflect a lot of light same with this matte black coating that they put on the receiver. So this thing would make an excellent hunting tool. It’s not gonna give away your position, it’s very discreet looking and unassuming and they’ve got this laser-etched checkering that really makes for a good solid grip. Even in adverse conditions, there’s really wet or humid outside you would have no problem holding onto this plate, it’s available with or without iron sights. I got it without iron sights and this is really vain of me because it looks a lot cooler. It kind of makes it look like a cheap Walmart air gun when you have those sights on there. So I think without the sights, I knew that I was to be putting an optic on this thing anyway, so I didn’t see the need for having iron sights.
I think Henry really nailed it with fixing all of those issues with your typical traditional lever-action rifle. I absolutely love this thing. I’ve just had a blast shooting it. So thank you to Henry for sending me this rifle for review. I’ve had it for about ten months. I think at this point, I’m just gonna call it mine but as much as I love this gun, there are a couple issues that I have and they’re real nitpicky issues but they are worth mentioning.
The first being that even though, there you can see that they really intentionally brought up this stock for a nice cheek weld and I do have the lowest profile scope mounting rings that I could find but even still to get my eye directly on target. I kind of have to rest it right here on my jaw bone as opposed to my cheek, so I wish that they would made this just a little bit taller to make it perfect for rifle scopes.
I know why they did it because they have the models that come with the iron sights, this would be perfect for the iron sights. But for the rifle scope, it’s just a little bit low and I’ll probably end up putting a cheek riser on it. But this American walnut socket is just so beautiful, it would just be a real shame to cover it up with a pad like that, so I don’t know I’m back and forth on the issue. But like I said, super nitpicking the other thing is okay as I’ve been testing this thing. I’ve been dropping the magazines in the dirt, I always do that whenever I really view a firearm. I really think that that’s just kind of a basic test is if the magazine can drop in the dirt, you can pick it up reload it and reuse it without issues, then it’s a good design. T
These every once in a while, the base plates were knocking loose and I didn’t realize it when I was reloading them, so I was having issues sometimes when I went to go load it that the magazine wouldn’t seat properly and I couldn’t figure it out and that’s definitely something you don’t want to be dealing with. If you’re trying to get reloaded in order to pick off your game that you’re after or you’re caught in a firefight with this thing, you just don’t want to be dealing with that. So I think that’s kind of a design flaw issue that the magazine base plates can slide around a little bit but once I knew to look for it, there’s a really easy fix the other issue that I have is also a magazine related and again this is being really nitpicky, but basically I just wished it held more than five rounds.
I know for hunting regulations and stuff, you typically don’t want to carry more than five rounds and stuff. I’m really not much of a hunter so I would actually rather have higher capacity. I would really like to see this thing take ten rounds and even better. I think Henry’s going to be rigging these things up to take AR mags anytime soon, but just an idea. I think Henry did an excellent job of this thing. It’s a very thoughtful design, it’s a major breakthrough for lever-action technology which sounds weird saying because when you talk about modern technology, you don’t think lever-action but you know Henry. They have their really strong American heritage history with lever guns and it’s awesome that they’re continuing to develop it even in this modern era.
But even still you’re probably thinking if you know me that I’m not really much of a hunter and I’m not really much of a long-range shooter, so why would I even want a gun like this. You know that I absolutely love the AR-15s, I think that they are just the most fun to shoot. I think they’re the most awesome modern sporting rifle that you can and they are just so much fun.