Winchester Model 1895

About the Winchester Model 1895

The Winchester Model 1895 is a lever-action repeating rifle designed by John Moses Browning and manufactured by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company of New Haven, Connecticut from 1896 to 1940. Historically significant as the first lever-action rifle ever produced with a non-detachable box magazine in place of the traditional tubular magazine, the Model 1895 was the first lever gun capable of safely firing the pointed spitzer bullets used in modern smokeless-powder, high-pressure military cartridges such as the .30-40 Krag, .30-03, .30-06 Springfield, and later the 7.62x54mmR. Browning's stout rear-locking bolt and vertical box magazine allowed Winchester to chamber the rifle in full-power rifle rounds well beyond anything the Models 1873, 1886, 1892, or 1894 could handle, turning the lever-action format into a credible big-game and military arm. Offered as a Sporting Rifle, Carbine, Musket, NRA Musket, and the dedicated Russian Musket variant with stripper-clip guides and a bayonet lug, the Model 1895 was produced in approximately seven commercial chamberings plus the Russian military contract. Production ran from 1896 to 1931 as standard catalog items, with final Russian contract assembly continuing into the early 1940s.

In 1909, former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt carried a custom .405 Winchester Model 1895 on his year-long East African safari, affectionately calling the cartridge his 'Big Medicine' after using it to drop lions, buffalo, and elephants at close range. Six years later Russia, desperate for rifles to arm its collapsing Eastern Front, placed an order for 300,000 Model 1895 Muskets in 7.62x54mmR - making Browning's lever gun, of all things, one of the standard-issue infantry rifles of the Russian Imperial Army during World War I and later a favored weapon of both Reds and Whites during the Russian Civil War.

Winchester Model 1895 specifications

Specifications listed are for the standard Sporting Rifle with a 28-inch round barrel in .30-40 Krag. Carbine variants used a 22-inch barrel; Muskets typically used a 28-inch barrel with full-length handguards, sling swivels, and bayonet lugs. The Russian contract Musket was chambered in 7.62x54mmR and was the only Model 1895 designed to load from stripper clips through a charger guide machined into the receiver. Early production rifles (serial numbers roughly 1-5000) featured a distinctive 'flat-side' receiver without the scalloped sides of later guns. The design was re-introduced in limited runs during the 2000s by Miroku of Japan for Winchester and by Browning, chambered primarily in .30-06 Springfield, .30-40 Krag, and .405 Winchester.