HENRY BIG BOY STEEL .44MAG - Stainless/Silver, 20" Barrel, 10 Rounds, Wood Stock

perfect in all ways gun/shipping/price

Amazing gun, fires true right out of the box... easily one of the best purchases I've made

Made in America or not made at all! This Henry All Weather Rifle .44 Mag has exceeded my expectations. Sturdy and smooth. An absolute thrill to shoot. Can not wait to feed it more.

Why? Why would you buy a lever-action rifle when you can get yourself ANOTHER AR-15 just like everyone else has, and put the same accessories on it just like everyone else has, and take it to the range to zero with about a hundred rounds because the cheap knock-off "acog" you bought from Amazon is pointing at the moon out of the box for some reason just like everyone else does? Well friend, I will tell you... because knowing where you came from can sometimes mean more than knowing where you are. This Henry Big Boy All-Weather (that is H012AW for those looking for parts like I was) is history at its finest with the best touches of modernity worked in to create a truly fantastic rifle. Is it perfect? Nope, and we will get to that. But what it is amounts to a wonderful shooter with style to spare and smiles for miles at the range or in the back woods.......................................................-
..... First, the good... when I got it as a companion rifle to my Ruger Super Blackhawk Hunter, which I also ordered from Buds (fantastic service as always) to make a truly sexy pair, it blew me away with the fit and finish. The stained wood is gorgeous and gives off a hint of silver in the grain. The matte chrome still glows and wipes clean super easy. No tooling marks or rough welds anywhere. Even the brass magazine tube had a nice shine on it and a bright orange plunger. The action is butter smooth - when I got it home, I popped ten snap caps in just to test functioning and I can get three shells in the air, all with trigger pulls, with a fourth chambered before the first shell hits the ground. And that is with no practice! At the range, this thing is boringly accurate. I set up two 18x12 targets at 50 and 100 meters expecting some fiddling with the buckhorn sights but no, it just landed everything in the ten-ring at both distances. If you move your sight picture in the buckhorns right, you dont even have to adjust to 100 meters and just keep landing shots. When you fire 44 Special out of it, you might as well be firing 22lr because there is zero recoil. And even with Magtech 44 Magnums at about 1,000 ft/lbs of energy at the muzzle, this rifle is still an absolute fluff-ball that gently nuzzles your shoulder like a kitten covered in bubble-wrapped who was rolled in cotton candy. And let us not forget that you can get 44 magnum rounds with higher energies than 5.56 NATO, so take that everyone looking at my funny at the range for laughing so hard!.......................................................-
............... Second, the bad. It aint all peaches and cream though. First and foremost, this thing get HOT. after 50 rounds of middle-range power factory magnum, you can singe a piece of paper; after 100, you can almost start a fire. Its the combination of a round barrel and the hard chrome that does this - you dont get that kind of burn from the blued octagonal barrels for at least another 50 rounds because the octagonal pattern has more metal and more surface area for cooling and doesnt transfer heat like stainless does. A hot barrel is not a deal-breaker per se, and the wood fore-grip stays nice and cool, but coupled with the tube magazine plunger needing to be removed (or at least mostly removed) for reloading, then you are looking at some cooked fingers. Which brings us to the second problem - the mag tube plunger. Dont get me wrong, it works flawlessly, but having to reach up to the muzzle, unlock it, remove it, load it, then replace it and re-lock it is just begging to burn your finger tips. Now my first lever-action was a Marlin 1895 Guide in 45-70 with a side-loading trap door which I absolutely HATED - it bit my fingers on every round and I wished for something better. But this plunger system isnt it. While it is a big improvement to the side-loaders, its still lacking and either burns you with a hot barrel or makes you sweep the muzzle a lot (which makes my range officers call foul all the time). Finally, its a little picky on ammo. Horandy Leverevolution trips up a lot in this rifle when cycling the action; weird considering that specific brand is made for exactly this type of rifle. So do higher-priced self defense factory loads. And its not the extraction but feeding, which is even weirder. My theory so far is that there is a little space between the far end of the elevator and the nose of the round that kind of hiccups on a case or a bullet that is just a bit irregular (like most fancy defensive loads are). But, good old flat-nosed FMJs or semi-leads run just fine........................................................-
...... So, should you buy it? YES! Absolutely! This thing is LOADS OF FUN for everything from plinking to range shooting out to about 250 meters (44 mag will start to wobble after that) to bottle-fustification to can-orbiting. I have no doubts this things is the easiest shooter to bag hogs, deer, coyotes, gazelle, crocodiles, golden marmosets, and pygmy giant sloths. Yes, it gets hotter than a roman candle in a can of gasoline and can be a bit fussy on the reload, but should that stop you from the pure, endless enjoyment of a rifle that will keep giving and giving long after we are too arthritic to work the lever? No, it shouldnt. And you should be as proud as I am to sling this Bad Big Boy up and send some serious lead down range with it. Our history as a country made this type of rifle a legacy and it can still be as relevant today as when it first helped tame the West. The question is - are you willing to put in the rounds to measure up to the pioneers that defined our country? Im just playin - shooting shouldnt be that serious; now who wants to see me light up a pumpkin full of tannerite with this thing?!

Love this gun. Action is so smooth and easy. Everything about it screams quality. It seems to be a very accurate gun. I have yet to try other ammo to find which is the best.What Ive shot so far has produced 1 1/2 inch groups at 75 yrds. Only complaint I have with the the 44 mag is that they are not offered with the pistol grip stock like the 45/70.