In the life of a gun lover, the different short and long types appear in sequence and the period of the lever-action rifle is always wedged between them: usually it jumps to the honors of study and research driven by various factors that are not always well defined, but the fact is that it is difficult to pass unscathed, as if the beneficial virus (today so overwhelmingly in the news in a far from favorable version) must necessarily develop to give way to something else later. However, vaccination grants backfires and today we are talking about it following a very satisfying experience. After the shotguns with smooth barrels and those with rifled barrels where the shooting models are insinuated and flanked, we go to parry with unusual determination on short weapons and here for us the military-type pistols with the geometric closure flanked by that other historical monument represented by revolving guns.
Precisely on the latter the dualism between Colt and Smith & Wesson had opened many roads and greatly increased knowledge, later increased by the Ruger brand with its specimens between the classic revised Colt '72 and the modernity of the Speed Six. Perhaps the revolvers themselves had opened the door to lever-action rifles, then obviously Winchester, the brand within the mental reach even of those who were at the first approaches, to which the Marlin was flanked only with a certain maturity in historical and mechanical knowledge. We arrive at this brand, equally well-known and shortly after, as a period of appearance and then of development, at the Winchester, the logical evolution of the original Henry: the doors of the Far West had opened, indeed wide open and the practice had unfolded on some models. Then the direction taken between shooting range and hunting had clearly indicated a different orientation: very few interventions on the wild boar, the chamois as a more than primary objective flanked over the years, and the availability in our areas, of the other ungulates had aimed at rifles with the classic sliding revolving bolt in which other cartridges were housed.
In the meantime, the panorama did not remain stationary on our usual shot, but expanded different possibilities with an expansion of the wild boar that only in a country like ours can we come to consider a calamity while elsewhere it is elevated to a formidable resource to be exploited. Let's leave aside these bitter considerations and focus on the snare to the black beast which, seen in negative or positive, is still a lively reality. We therefore give a brief overview of the rifles that can be used for this specific hunt.
From side-by-side with smooth barrels to semi-auto with barrel slug equipped with metal sights or with the assembly of various types of optics, it is possible to reach semi-auto grooved or in-line movements. Alongside these very European solutions, the Old West is not left to be sidelined and so the lever action rifle makes itself felt again. Among the various prerogatives that boar rifles must have, the speed of rearmament stands out and the possibility of having a cartridge with a nice bucket of Joules that can be transferred in suitable measure on the game of which everyone knows the vitality and resistance to blows. It is true that semi-auto with rifled barrel serve this purpose magnificently, but they are not appreciated in all hunting areas for which it is necessary to find a second solution that is perhaps not only technical, the straight pull they would already be there ready for use, but that retain that little charm that gives a hunt conducted to achieve the result together with the way to achieve it.
We said about the speed in rearming: with lever action rifles this is not exactly immediate and a little patient training is needed to masterfully perform the operation without detaching the butt plate from the shoulder making the rifle make strong digressions from the line of sight and therefore from the running target; together you need to find the trigger finger exactly on the trigger, when you have finished the operation, ready to press it and not to tear. The overall contained mass, the balance given by the greater weight centered between the two hands, the reduced size thanks to the short barrel, the fast shoulder are very favorable elements for an instinctive tappet and a swing, to follow the race of the game, as well natural: training in a shooting range equipped with the Cinghiale Corrente system will allow you to master all these elements and, most importantly, to operate the reset lever with the necessary science and the desired speed. The choice of caliber will be more or less favorable to this essential function: a very powerful cartridge like the historic .45-70 Gvt. or the much more recent .444 Marlin of the same manufacturer, provided for similar models, will give greater recoil representing the negative factor, accompanied by the positivity of an excellent level of damaging power even at the maximum distances within which a wild boar is engaged.
For this test we chose a cartridge that several tens of years ago was rather used by the first belt makers in favor of rifled barrels and then went out of style outclassed by traditional rifle cartridges with the .30-06 Sprg. and the .308 Win. to act as a reference and the waltz of magnums such as .300 and .338 both by Winchester to finally settle on old Europe with Otto Bock's 9,3 × 62: the .44 Mag., "born in 1955 by Elmer Keith and that group of fanatics of the super powerful revolver ”(cf. FC Barnes in the book Cartridges trad. Italian by Albertelli) is chambered in revolvers and lever-action rifles from the moment of its appearance, retaining some good prerogatives along with a limitation.
Let's start with the latter: the charge valid for a revolver and the heavy 240 gr bullet express in a barrel between 50 and 60 cm long a V / 0 of about 525 m / sec with 225 kgm of energy, about what the classic .30-30 Win. with the difference of a very curved trajectory and a rapid decay of speed. Very positive we find the mass, the straight section, the sectional density of the ball usually semi-sheathed and hollow point: what it takes over short distances to gain an appreciable stopping power. We emphasize the short distances in which everything is played by marrying the old English rule of heavy and low-speed bullet: certainly here the hydrodynamic shock effect is a bit random, not to mention absent, but in an area that we can spanometrically indicate in about fifty meters this cartridge is still able to ensure great satisfaction; add that the recoil, so exuberant in a revolver, in this Marlin becomes a little thing for ladies (those of the 60s) and this factor also has its advantages. We consider it practical to entrust the technical explanations to the captions of the images, while here we summarize the sensations experienced in the different shooting sessions.
In the Carrù range we conducted several tests: the first by shooting from sitting at 50 m with only the front support and the weak hand placed under the butt of the stock, using the metal sights with the diopter and the prismatic sight. After having adapted the eye and the glasses to the pinhole, fortunately very large, we put a few shots around before realizing that, at the chosen distance, we had to take only the minimum apical portion of the viewfinder. In this way we managed to close a couple of groups that would have been very useful on a game. Having then available the recent red dot of the Kahles we did not miss the opportunity to mount it on the practical Picatinny type guide: a tot long ... even two ... it allowed to position the optical instrument at the distance suited to our eye providing not only a precise view of the bright dot but at the same time a remarkable overview of what was around.
So we committed ourselves to the Cinghiale Corrente, one of Giorgio Rosso's recent innovations in Carrù (CN) and here too we have achieved more than satisfactory results for our skills. In the midst of the different series where photos were taken and film footage shot, we managed to jam the Marlin by misplacing a cartridge in the King flap of the tubular fuel tank. Some ingenuity, the tip of a sturdy blade engaged in the collar of the cartridge case and the matter was resolved: luckily, boars did not pass by in those moments. At the end of the tests we re-observed the rifle noting how in the States the religion of raise action not only perpetuates its production, but allows those digressions from orthodoxy that see the use of stainless steel and the adoption of laminated wood, or even synthetic material. Purists will always have cult objects with an attached image of John Wayne at their disposal, while innovative ones will find those, such as the Mod. SBL, more suited to their nature, in line with a certain modernity of appearance. However, it should be clear that the lever mechanism, especially in the Marlin edition which had already improved the primordial Winchesters in the 800th century, remains solid and reliable, ideally linked to its origins such as the smell of cattle, the smell of horses. , the smell of the herdsmen and the thundering gallop of the sixty million bison of the mythical herd of the Great Plains.
The author thanks:
the Paganini company of Turin for the provision of the Marlin SBL rifle
Mr. Josef Kampfer of Kahles Italia for Kahles Helia RD
Giorgio Rosso of the polygon of Carrù (CN) 347 96 92 677 for the kind welcome and the kind availability of the facilities
Manufacturer: The Marlin Firearms Co. - Ilion - NY - (USA)
Distributor: Paganini - Turin - www.paganini.it
Model: 1894 SBL
CALIBRO: .44 Rem. Mag. Or .44 Special
Type: lever action rifle with sliding prismatic bolt
Castle: in steel with side ejection opening
canna: length 42 cm - 6 Ballard type lines with 1/38 "pitch
Supply: fixed tubular magazine with 6 cartridges (+1 in the barrel)
Triggering device: direct action with single trigger
Extractor: hook with pivoting movement
Ejector: contrast strut embedded in the castle
External sights: in steel with matt black anti-reflective burnishing composed of diopter on drawstring adjustable in both directions - prism viewfinder with white vertical line - Picatinny / Weaver type base for optics
Safety: hammer half-mounted - two-position button on the right of the castle - additionally automatic safety given by the misalignment of the firing pin shank and release lock when the weapon is not closed
Stocking: in two pieces obtained from laminated wood - Soft Tech ™ butt pad
Weight :: 2.900 g