Winchester Model 1893

About the Winchester Model 1893

The Winchester Model 1893 is an exposed-hammer, pump-action (slide-action) 12-gauge shotgun designed by John Moses Browning. It was Winchester's first slide-action repeating shotgun, feeding from a tubular magazine. Built for black-powder shells, it proved unable to safely handle the higher pressures of early smokeless-powder loads and was recalled and rapidly superseded by the strengthened Winchester Model 1897.

The Model 1893 was the first successful pump shotgun and the direct ancestor of the legendary Model 1897 'trench gun', but it was pulled from the market almost immediately when smokeless powder revealed its action was not strong enough.

Winchester Model 1893 specifications

Roughly 34,000 were produced in a short run; many were recalled and exchanged for Model 1897s because the action could open under smokeless-powder pressures. Surviving examples are collector items.