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Winchester Model 1894 .25-35 WCF Rifle By the Guns and Shooting Online Staff

Winchester Model 1894 Rifle
Receiver area of Model 1894 .25-35 test rifle w/action unlocked. Photo by Suzie Patterson.

The rifle that is the subject of this review belonged to Guns and Shooting OnlineSupport person Suzie Patterson’s Grandfather. According to its serial number, it was manufactured in 1907.

At that time the .25-35 WCF was a reasonably popular combination deer, antelope and small predator cartridge, although .25-35 rifles and ammunition sales never approached the levels attained by the .30-30 and .32 Win. Special.

Still, it was chambered in Winchester, Marlin and Savage lever actions for nearly half a century.

It was sufficiently popular to be copied by Remington during the first decade of the 20th Century, when Big Green introduced a line of rimless cartridges for their early pump and autoloading rifles. These Remington rimless numbers were ballistically identical to the .25-35 (.25 Rem.), .30-30 (.30 Rem.) and .32 Special (.32 Rem.).

The Remington rimless cartridges are now obsolete, but Winchester still loads .25-35 ammunition, as do some of the specialty ammo makers, such as Stars & Stripes. Occasionally someone turns out a few rifles in the caliber.

We reviewed a .25-35 Winchester Model 94 Trails End in 2005. We would like to see Winchester chamber their new Model 94 rifles in .25-35 and suggested exactly that in our recent review of a new Model 94 Sporter.

(See the Product Reviews page for the reviews of both these Model 94 rifles.)

We would also like to see Hornady include the .25-35 in their LeverEvolution ammunition line, loaded with a 117 grain FTX boat-tail spitzer bullet at over 2400 fps, which should be easy to do with modern powders.

We like the .25-35 because it represents the lowest level of recoil in a cartridge suitable for hunting deer and other medium size CXP2 game. The present Winchester factory load launches a 117 grain flat point bullet at a muzzle velocity (MV) of 2230 fps, with 1292 ft. lbs. of muzzle energy (ME).

The velocity/energy at 100 yards is 1866 fps/904 ft. lbs., over the 800 ft. lbs. minimum usually recommended for deer hunting. At 200 yards, the numbers are 1545 fps/620 ft. lbs. The maximum point blank range of that load (+/- 3″) is around 200 yards.

These numbers are not impressive compared to the .243 Winchester or .257 Roberts, but they compare favorably with other minimum recoil deer cartridges, such as the .357 Magnum and .44-40 fired from rifles.

In fact, the .25-35 delivers as much energy at 200 yards as the .357/180 grain factory load does at 100 yards or the .44-40/200 grain factory load can muster at the muzzle. Seen in that light, a young or recoil sensitive beginning hunter could do worse than a .25-35 rifle.

According to the “Rifle Recoil Table,” the .25-35 normally produces between six and seven foot pounds of recoil energy in rifles weighing 6.5 to 7.5 pounds, or about half the recoil of a .30-30 fired in the same rifle. That is similar to the recoil of one of the short 6mm bench rest cartridges, only the .25-35 shoots a fatter bullet that is almost 50% heavier.

We occasionally get mail asking what cartridge we recommend for young (10-12 year old), recoil sensitive shooters anticipating their first deer hunt. If modern rifles and ammunition were available, the .25-35 would definitely be at or near the top of our list.

If you agree, please send a note to Winchester Repeating Arms, Henry and Marlin asking for .25-35 rifles and to Hornady and Winchester Ammunition requesting modern .25-35 factory loads.

Our sport desperately needs rifles chambered for moderate, low recoil cartridges suitable for beginning hunters.

The rifle that is the subject of this review is in very good condition and would serve a beginner nicely.

Unfortunately, due to collector demand for old Model 1894 rifles in calibers other than .30-30 and .32 Special, its fair market value puts it out of the typical beginning hunter’s price class.

Few dads would be willing (or able) to spend so much money for their 12 year old offspring’s first centerfire rifle.

Specifications

  • Model: Winchester 1894
  • Type: Lever action rifle
  • Caliber: .25-35 WCF
  • Barrel: Octagon; nickel steel for smokeless powder
  • Barrel length: 26″
  • Twist: 1 turn in 8 inches
  • Magazine capacity: 9 cartridges
  • Trigger pull: approx. 4 lbs.
  • Sights: Gold bead front, adjustable buckhorn rear (also an adjustable, folding tang rear sight)
  • Stock: 2-piece black walnut; straight hand with crescent rifle butt plate
  • Overall length: 44″
  • Weight: approx. 7.5 lbs.
  • 2011 used value: Approx. $2500 (75% original finish per Fjestads)

As one might expect of a rifle manufactured in 1907 by one of the greatest arms makers of the time, this rifle is built entirely of forged steel parts and walnut. It was carefully assembled by skilled workers. The bore of our test rifle is somewhat worn, but shiny and in generally good condition.

Safety is provided by a hammer safety notch. When the chamber is loaded, manually lower the hammer from the full-cock position until it engages the safety notch (about 3/4 of the way down).

This is easy to do. Keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction while you are lowering the hammer. Yes, the hammer can be forced by a perfectly directed, very heavy blow, such as from a carpenter’s hammer, but so what? That is not going to happen in the field.

In addition to the stock sights, this rifle wears a folding, tang mounted peep sight. This is probably the fastest type of iron sight ever devised for a hunting rifle and considerably easier with which to shoot accurately than the standard open sights.

It is especially good for middle aged shooters whose eyes have lost some of their power of accommodation.

We were interested in getting this .25-35 to the range for some shooting. Our friends at Winchester Ammunition kindly provided 100 rounds of Super-X .25-35 ammunition for this review, for which we are very grateful. Please support them by buying and using their products.

As usual, we did our shooting at the Izaak Walton outdoor range south of Eugene, Oregon. This facility offers covered bench rests with target stands at 25, 50, 100 and 200 yards, but we confined our shooting to 100 yards, a long way for iron sights and our aging eyes.

The bulk of the shooting was done from a bench rest over sandbags by Guns and Shooting Online staff members Chuck Hawks and Rocky Hays.

The results were excellent. We found the old rifle capable of shooting 2″ to 2-1/2″ groups, when we did our part, using the tang mounted aperture sight. (Neither Chuck nor Rocky have any use for semi-buckhorn open sights.)

Chuck and Rocky found the recoil to be low and this, of course, promotes good shooting.

Suzie, who is not an experienced rifle shooter, had previously fired her grandfather’s rifle and thought it kicked pretty hard, although she was able to keep her bullets on the target.

This merely illustrates that rifles in common calibers experienced shooters are inclined to take for granted (.30-30, 7mm-08, .260 and others of that ilk) may be beyond the ability of inexperienced shooters to shoot without flinching.

The .25-35 may well be all a beginner can handle and clean kills result from proper bullet placement, not raw power.

We all came away from our range session impressed with the gentle .25-35 cartridge and the accuracy of this turn of the 20th Century Model 1894 rifle.

As mentioned above, our sport desperately needs hunting rifles chambered for moderate, low recoil cartridges suitable for young (and old) shooters and it just doesn’t get any better than a sleek lever action rifle chambered for the .25-35 cartridge.

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Commentary: Yes, They’re Coming for Your Guns by Ned Ryun

handgun with ammo
Perhaps, like me, you’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that the un-American Left is ignorant of many things. But then they open their mouths and remove all doubt.

The most recent example comes from the gaping maw of Elie Mystal on MSNBC, where he claimed that, like everything else in this country apparently, the Second Amendment is the creation of long-dead, racist white supremacists who supported it for the sole purpose of putting down slave revolts keeping the enslaved populations in bondage. Of course, there is as much “truth” to that as there is in the 1619 Project. Progressives use such revisionist history to discredit the founders so that they can dismantle the founders’ republic.

The basic history lesson the Left seems to have missed while being indoctrinated in our schools is this: the founders believed in natural inherent rights—ones that were given to human beings by their Creator. As these were rights given by a transcendent source. They understood that no earthly power—say, a despotic British empire—could legitimately take them away. Among those rights were life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and property, but that was just a start to their list. In fact, Alexander Hamilton didn’t think a Constitution could ever be written that could fully enumerate all human rights.

In this discussion of rights, understand that the founders also viewed as inherent the right to property. As Madison wrote, “There is a right to property and a property in rights.” These beliefs informed the founders’ construction of the machinery of government in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, which are really nothing more than an attempt to spell out and codify higher, transcendent law so it can be formed into a workable form of earthly government. Because of that, the founders also believed that a free populace had the right, if not the responsibility, to protect their God-given rights with anything and everything at their disposal; to not defend their natural rights was to shame their Maker.

It was to that end the Second Amendment was written. When all arguments and words failed in the defense of natural rights, the last defense is an armed one. The Second Amendment is for when the talking is done and the shooting begins. A “well-regulated militia” did not mean, as Progressives insist it does, some formal government entity, the membership of which is determined by the government. The founders simply meant that citizens needed to have the right to possess weapons sufficient to organize themselves into militias. In no way did they imagine government regulation of who gets a gun or who doesn’t.

The founders defined a well-regulated militia as one well armed with the best muskets, supplied with copious amounts of ammunition, and regularly drilled to maintain proficiency with those weapons. Again, revisionists want to define words in terms suited to their altered telling of history, but that’s antithetical to the historical method, real history, and the founders’ use of the terms.

All of which is to say that I am pretty sure the founders would have advocated Stingers, Javelins, and machine guns (and, yes, even tanks) for private citizens to use in defense of their rights today. They were all for the people being as well-armed as any government in order that they would serve as a bulwark against the government becoming despotic and attempting to take away their rights.

Case in point: When the founders were confronting an increasingly draconian British government, and all attempts at dialogue with the Empire failed, they were simultaneously and actively smuggling and stealing cannons and gunpowder; dare I say, actively smuggling and arming with “weapons of war.”

So all this talk from Progressives about why the Second Amendment is really just a well-regulated, government-sponsored militia can be summed up in one word: gibberish.

What the un-American Left really wants is to destroy the American people’s right to self-defense. Why? Because it’s much, much harder to send people to reeducation camps where “conscience reformation” can happen when those people are shooting back at you.

In watching recent events unfold, I’ve concluded the irreligious, un-American Left simply hates you and your rights. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking they don’t, that somehow they’re rational human beings who can be reasoned with, or that ultimately they want what’s best for the American people. If they did, then Joe Biden would never have just admitted that his administration had no interest in hardening schools against potential attacks in the future. They want to take away your rights and your ability to defend yourself. Period.

If you want to ignore what is happening and where it will ultimately end if we’re not careful, it’s a free country and that is your prerogative. Just don’t whine when the country is no longer free and they come knocking at your door and you have no means of resisting them when they tell you to get on the trains headed to reeducation camps.

– – –

Ned Ryun reports for American Greatness.

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As House Moves Forward on Gun Bills, Senate Seeks More Time to Find Bipartisan Agreement By Joseph Lord (This means in English that we are in risk of losing more of our rights)

The U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 31, 2022. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
The U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 31, 2022. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Democrats in the House have put forward an array of wide-reaching gun control bills that are set to come to the floor this week, but in the Senate, which can make or break the success of most bills, Republican Party negotiators are requesting more time.

Various Democrat factions in both the House and Senate have pushed for sweeping federal legislation to change gun laws in the United States, in the wake of a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two adults dead.

House Democrats Float Various Gun Control Proposals

In the House, where simple majorities rule, Democrats have pushed for the wide-reaching “Protecting Our Kids” Act, which was pushed through the House Judiciary Committee in a party-line vote last week. It is expected to come to the floor for a vote later this week.

That bill, among other provisions, would ban the sale of “any semi-automatic centerfire rifle or semi-automatic centerfire shotgun that has, or has the capacity to accept, an ammunition feeding device with a capacity exceeding 5 rounds” to citizens below the age of 21. Currently one only needs to be 18 to buy such a weapon.

It would also codify the Department of Justice’s controversial ban on bump stocks, a weapon modification that increases the fire rate of a semi-automatic firearm.

In addition, the bill would make it a federal crime to possess weapons that critics have pejoratively labeled “ghost guns”—a term usually describing homemade or 3D-printed weapons without a serial number.

However, the real litmus test for any bill is in the Senate, where most legislation must overcome a 60-vote filibuster threshold to pass.

Foreseeing difficulty overcoming the filibuster threshold, Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) put forward a bill that would bypass the filibuster entirely.

That bill, much narrower in scope than the Protecting Our Kids Act, would place a 1,000 percent tax on many types of semi-automatic firearms in the hope of making them unaffordable for most average Americans.

Specifically, the bill targets weapons like the AR-15, which can range in price from $400 to $2,000. If Beyer’s bill were to become law, this range would increase to over $4,000 on the low end to $20,000 on the high end.

“Congress must act to prevent mass shootings,” Beyer said in a June 5 Twitter post. “I’m writing a bill to restrict the flow of weapons of war into American communities—including AR-15’s and high capacity magazines—that could bypass the filibuster and pass with just 50 votes in the Senate.”

To do so, the bill uses the budget reconciliation process. This process allows bills specifically related to federal revenues and expenditures to pass through the Senate by a simple majority vote, with no need for the bill to overcome the filibuster threshold.

Democrats have already relied on the process on various occasions to overcome GOP resistance in the upper chamber.

At the beginning of 2021, the budget reconciliation process was used to advance the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to President Joe Biden’s desk. Later, Democrats used it for the Build Back Better Act, which ultimately failed after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) refused to vote for the package.

However, this process too is subject to some limitations.

Because of the potential for abuse of the system, as indeed happened through the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan and the Democrat-controlled House, the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) authored a rule requiring all items in a budget reconciliation bill to be directly related to federal revenues and expenditures.

The parliamentarian, who serves as the Senate’s nonpartisan referee, has wide-reaching authority to accept or reject items in budget reconciliation that go beyond the bounds of this rule.

This was a power that current parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough exercised on several occasions, during negotiations surrounding immigration provisions in the Build Back Better Act.

Though Beyer’s bill seems to be within the bounds of the reconciliation process, Republicans could try to convince MacDonough to rule against the bill if it comes to the Senate.

So far, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democrat leaders have given no indication that the bill will be considered, however.

Senator Cornyn, Leading GOP Senate Negotiations, Asks for More Time

In the Senate as well, lawmakers have spent the past few weeks working to find a legislative response to the shooting.

Republicans, citing Second Amendment rights, have long pushed back against Democrats’ efforts to tighten federal gun laws. Some Republicans seem to be open to softening this stance, though most have pushed for bills to increase school security or address widespread mental illness issues instead of stricter gun control.

Most prominently, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said during an interview with CNN that he had instructed Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) to negotiate with some Democrats, including Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), to try to hammer out a compromise bill.

“I’ve encouraged him to talk to Senator Sinema, Senator Murphy, and others who are interested in trying to get an outcome that’s directly related to the problem,” McConnell said, adding that he is “hopeful that we could come up with a bipartisan solution that’s directly related to the facts of this awful massacre.”

McConnell was anxious to emphasize that he was not pushing for legislation that would advance a partisan Democrat agenda, but only to find a legislative solution directly related to the circumstances of the Uvalde shooting.

“What I’ve asked Senator Cornyn to do is to meet with the Democrats who are interested in getting a bipartisan solution and come up with a proposal, if possible, that’s crafted to meet this particular problem,” he said.

However, Cornyn has indicated that lawmakers need more time to work out any such agreement, despite a sense of anxiety on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) part to bring legislation to the floor as soon as possible.

Cornyn told another news outlet that negotiators will need at least a week to hammer out any such deal, and he asked Schumer to push back the deadline for reaching an agreement.

“Good consensus legislation takes time. So I hope Sen. Schumer will let his members work,” Cornyn said. “There’s no use in rushing a vote on a doomed partisan bill like the House is expected to vote on this week.”

In a June 5 ad in the Dallas Morning News, 250 GOP donors praised McConnell’s decision to tap Cornyn as the lead negotiator in the effort, saying Cornyn is “the right man to lead this bipartisan effort, as he has demonstrated throughout his career.”

It remains unclear what will come of the Senate negotiations, however.

Even with McConnell’s backing, any agreement reached between Cornyn and Democrats will need the support of at least 10 Republicans. And many, concerned about returning to their constituents with a gun control bill on their record, may be hesitant to back any such bill.

Further complicating the issue, progressive elements in the House may be hesitant to give their backing to a bill that does not go as far as they would like.

Joseph Lord

Joseph Lord
Joseph Lord is a congressional reporter for The Epoch Times.
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Now that’s a GUN!