Sako VL63 Finnwolf

About the Sako VL63 Finnwolf

The Sako VL63 Finnwolf is a Finnish hammerless lever-action hunting rifle produced by Sako from 1962 to 1974. Unusually for a lever gun, it feeds from a detachable three-round box magazine and locks with a rotating bolt head, while a rack-and-pinion geared lever gives a short, fast, smooth throw. Chambered in .308 Winchester and .243 Winchester, it was aimed at the American deer-hunting market as a more refined alternative to the Winchester 88 and Savage 99.

One of the very few lever-action rifles ever fed from a detachable box magazine, the Finnwolf paired a rotating-bolt lockup with a rack-and-pinion lever so refined that reviewers called it a technical tour de force - yet its premium Finnish price kept it from ever displacing the cheaper Winchester and Savage lever guns it was designed to beat.

Sako VL63 Finnwolf specifications

Praised for its accuracy (around one inch at 100 yards) and excellent trigger, the Finnwolf was ultimately too expensive to compete with mainstream American lever actions and was discontinued after a relatively short production run, making surviving examples collectible.