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With roots dating back to the 1890s, the Winchester Model 62 was the best of a long line of .22 caliber pump action rifles. These handy guns put food on the table, taught many a young shooter, and proved the weapon of choice for those who would plink tin cans, clay ducks, or spin the pinwheels at carnival shooting galleries on warm summer days.

In the year 1890, a few things happened at Winchester. The company picked up a new president, Mr. TG Bennett. One of the first things that Bennett did was look at the company’s dated line of 1870s lever action rifles and shake his head. They needed new rifles, better rifles and to come up with new ideas he reached out for new blood. It was then, while making moves to diversify this line, Bennett contracted with a young gunsmith by the name of John Moses Browning.  That very year the new Model 1890 slide-action .22 rimfire rifle was introduced.

Spawned from Browning’s drawing board, this gun was a super simple pump-action rifle, the first of its kind, and it was fast, light, and accurate to boot. This gun was modified in 1906 with a rounded barrel as the logically named Model 1906. The Models 1890 and 1906 combined proved wildly successful with over 1.6-million of the handy shooters made by 1932 and inspiring such imitation as the Colt Lightning.

By 1932, Browning was called to the great gun shop in the sky, as had Bennett, but Winchester still wanted to update the then-classic Model 1890.

Read the rest in my column at Guns.com