The Winchester 1895 Rifle: Winchester’s other lever gun
When you think Winchester rifles, their bolt action Model 70 and the classic lever guns like the 66, 73 and 94 spring to mind. However, the company also made another lever—the 1895—and this gun seems to pop up in the strangest of places.
In the 1890s, Winchester made two types of center-fire rifles: classic lever action guns that used fat, low-velocity bullets, and the single shot 1885 series low/high walls that fired larger rounds. The company needed a repeater that could compete with the new, inexpensive, bolt-action rifles being made by Mauser, Steyr, and others. These ‘bolt guns’ fired full-sized smokeless powder rounds at high velocity and fed from internal box magazines that held a reserve of cartridges. Winchester didn’t have anything comparable with this combination of features, so they turned to their in-house genius, John Browning.
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