How a Winchester 1873 Works (Lever-Action Rifle) REVIEW

Several different weapons, both rifles and handguns, have been dubbed “the gun that won the west.” Like the Colt 1873 Peacemaker, a .45 caliber six-shot revolver; the Winchester Model 1866 “Yellowboy” lever-action repeating rifle, so named for its shiny brass frame; or today’s main focus, the Winchester Model 1873 lever-action repeating rifle. Let’s find out more about this special gun, including how it works!

The Gun That Won The West
Some believe the Winchester Model 1873 is widely known as ‘the gun that won the west’ purely because there were so many made. With a production run of more than 720,000 in 50+ years, anyone who wanted one could buy one. And that meant a lot of these rifles went west with those brave enough to pack up and head off into parts. The steel-framed Model 1873 was made as a musket = a 30” round barrel (smooth bore, not rifled). According to Winchester, there were only around 500 of these produced.
Though the 1873 couldn’t handle the more powerful cartridges used by the single-shot rifles of the time, we’re thinking 14 shots before reloading versus one made it worth the trade-off. Originally chambered for the .44-40 cartridge (a .44 caliber bullet, propelled by 40 grains of black powder), the Model 1873 was later produced in .38-40 and .32-20, all of which were popular handgun cartridges of the day. This was important–if your handgun and your rifle used different size ammunition, you had to carry two sizes and you ran the risk of not having enough of what you needed; but if your belt guns and your saddle gun all used the same cartridge, you just dug into the saddle bag and started stuffing in bullets. That could help get your hero out of a really tight spot. However, if you’re going to have your hero–or heroine or villain–carry two weapons that share ammunition, remember that the original Model 1873 was not made to use the.45 caliber Colt cartridge used in the very popular Colt “Peacemaker.”But that doesn’t mean a Colt and a Winchester never shared ammunition. The popularity of the Winchester in .44-40 caliber had Colt manufacturing a version of the Single Action Army “Peacemaker” revolver that could use the Winchester’s ammunition. This insured the success of the Winchester rifle.

Road to Success
Hollywood made a feature film about it. Buffalo Bill declared it to be “The Boss.” Winchester called it, simply, the New Model of 1873. The rifle came from a dingy brick factory in New Haven, Connecticut, the product of men and women who worked in an inferno of noise for $600 a year, 11 hours a day on weekdays, 10 hours on Saturdays. It was a raging success from the beginning, and although it was rapidly outmoded, the Model 1873 was so popular that it remained in production for 52 years. In all, 720,610 of the rifles were made. The 73 was more than a rifle model. It became an American symbol. As gun writer Ned Crossman stated in 1920, the 1873 was “the rifle that put the name Winchester on the map of the West, trotting along with the equally formidable Colt gun at the belt of the frontiersman.”

The Unstoppable Lever-Action
Ironically, we wouldn’t consider the Winchester 1873 much of a rifle by today’s standards. Historian Mike Venturino owns and shoots three original 73s. “It’s a 150-yard rifle chambered for a dinky little handgun cartridge,” Venturino says. “About the best I can do with my 73s is 3-inch groups at 100 yards, and beyond that, the sights are too coarse for any kind of accuracy. What the 73 did have was firepower. Aiming carefully, I can fire 15 shots in 60 seconds. That’s what made the rifle so popular, even when there were more accurate, more powerful guns available.”
And in an era when many guns were fussy and unreliable, the 73 was just about unstoppable. It would not let you down, ever. In 1875, in a gun battle with Comanche Indians at a place called Enchanted Rock in central Texas, near what is now the town of Llano, a Texas Ranger named George Lloyd accidentally stuffed a .45 Long Colt cartridge into his .44/40 Model 73, jamming the rifle nicely. Pulling out his knife, Lloyd unscrewed the 73′s side plate, pried out the .45, replaced the part, and got back in the fight.


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