This Old Gun - My 70's Era Winchester 94 in 30-30

 My first hunting rifle is this beat up Winchester 94. I bought it from a pawn shop in Georgia for about $400 or so thinking it was in good enough shape. I later found out that it had serious issues with the internals and the rear sight was broken. Externally the rifle looks great with little issues to the bluing and the wood having only a few dents. Nothing out of the norm. 

To get it ready for use, I took it over to Moss Pawn in Jonesboro to have them see if they could fix an issue with the cartridge stop. The old rifle would allow a round to slip out under the action forcing me to take apart the lever and parts to remove the cartridge. Thankfully, they were able to weld up and reshape the stop so I could use the gun. I can still only get 5 rounds in the 6 round magazine before the issue happens again but it's fine enough for hunting. 

I wanted a scope of some kind but given the top eject system of the rifle and it not being an Angle Eject model, I first tried the side mount. I abandoned the side mount since a cheek weld is something that just doesn't happen. 

I found a website that has an inexpensive scout mount called Dr. Pearson's No Drill mount that worked well. In those years, I moved too often to have a work bench to properly build guns so I had to make due with simple tools and finding ways to do what I wanted without a vice or similar. In this case, I was able to drift in the dovetail adapter for the scout mount. I did find that the issue with the rear sight was someone had seriously boogered up the dovetail at some point. I had to file it to restore the correct shape. 

Once done, I had the mount in, I topped the rifle with an inexpensive Vortex Crossfire II scout 2-7x32 scope. After leveling as best I could, the rifle was eventually adorned with cheap leather goods such as a sling and shell holder for the stock. I did add a Williams rear sight thinking I'll not be using the rear buckhorn sights anytime soon. A addition I'm very glad I made. I've found some of the old timers took interest in the scout configuration thinking on it as odd but novel. 

All in all, the rifle in this state performed admirably. I feel I gave the old rifle a new lease on life. It was the rifle I learned to hunt with and put food in my family's freezer early on as a newly married couple. 

I did find that the scope's aperture is narrow and less to my liking than something with a shorter eye relief. Given the rifle's action, scope options are very limited. I later built the What Would Stoner Do inspired AR-15 build project that ended with my current hunting / general purpose rifle.   

The early version of the WWSD Hunter build. 

Because of the success of the WWSD Hunter Mod 1, I removed the scout mount and scope from the Winchester. Thinking I wouldn't need the Winchester as my primary big game harvester, I zeroed the Williams rear receiver sight for 25 yards with some of the Winchester 170 grain PowerPoints I had in inventory. If the math checks out, that should put the bullet around half an inch down at 100 yards and around 4.5 inches at 150 yards. I could tinker with the zero to make it better for those longer distances but I think with my astigmatism, I'll leave it set. 

I like keeping the old rifle handy and zeroed correctly as it fulfils my romanticized desires for classic Americana hunting rifles. The current configuration is still very usable as a short range hunting / general purpose rifle even if it doesn't have provisions for a silencer or modern optics.