Colt Woodsman

About the Colt Woodsman

The Colt Woodsman is a .22 Long Rifle semi-automatic pistol designed by John Moses Browning and produced by Colt's Manufacturing from 1915 to 1977. A simple straight-blowback action, a crisp single-action trigger, and a slender grip angle inherited from Browning's 1900-era pistol work made it the benchmark American rimfire target and plinking handgun for more than fifty years. Built across four recognised generations - the Pre-Woodsman first series, Series 1, Series 2, and Series 3 - and offered in Sport, Target, Match Target, Huntsman, and Challenger configurations, the Woodsman fed from a 10-round detachable box magazine and fired the full spectrum of .22 LR ammunition once heat-treated mainsprings were introduced in the early 1930s. The Match Target, with its heavy 6.5-inch barrel and flared 'Elephant Ear' walnut grips, remains one of the most collectible and accurate iron-sighted rimfire pistols ever mass-produced. Total production across all series exceeded 690,000 units before Colt ceased manufacture in 1977, unable to match the price of Ruger's simpler Standard Model.

During WWII the OSS issued suppressor-fitted Woodsmen to field agents for silent close-range assassinations, including at least one documented killing of a German sentry at point-blank range. War hero Audie Murphy owned several Woodsmen and reportedly kept a Match Target on his nightstand; the pistol's fifty-year reign as America's favourite plinker finally ended when Bill Ruger's cheaper, mass-producible Standard Model, launched in 1949, slowly eroded Colt's market until the line was dropped in 1977.

Colt Woodsman specifications

Early Series 1 guns were not rated for high-velocity .22 LR and can be damaged by modern ammunition; collectors restrict them to standard-velocity loads. Suppressor-fitted Woodsmen were issued in small numbers to OSS field agents in WWII alongside the better-known High Standard HDM.