Henry Rifles: Made in America or not made at all…

About four years ago I went to the range with my good buddy TK. TK is a cool guy and he had a rifle I didn’t know much about. It was a new .44 Magnum Henry lever action rifle with a brass receiver and, in a word, it was stunning. The brass and the bluing were highly polished, the walnut stock was highly figured, and wow, was it ever accurate. I’d seen Henry rifles before but I had never handled or fired one, and when TK let me shoot his…well, let me put it this way:  Wow!  TK was impressed with my marksmanship and so was I.  I put five .44 slugs through a hole you could cover with a quarter, and folks, with open sights, that’s good shooting.  The rifle looked, felt, handled, and shot the way a rifle should.

Just a couple of weeks ago, good buddy Greg and I were on the range again and Greg had a new toy. He had recently purchased an older Harrington and Richardson break open rifle in .223, and it was nice. Harrington and Richardson stopped making their rifles some time ago, and I always thought having one in .45 70 would be the right thing to do.  But I had never gotten around to scratching that itch.  Maybe it was time to do something about that, I thought.

I like the concept of break open rifle, and I love the concept of a single shot. They are just cool. You have to make every shot count, and that’s appealing to me.  A Ruger No. 1 or a Ruger No. 3 single shot rifle has always been my first choice.  There’s something about a single shot rifle that floats my boat.

Seeing Greg’s H&R single shot .223 got me to thinking about Henry rifles again, probably because I’d seen something on the web about Henry having introduced a new single shot. I remembered the quality of TK’s Henry, and I love the break open configuration I was seeing on Greg’s H&R.  It reminded me of my very first rifle…a .177 caliber pellet gun I’ve had since I was a kid wandering the woods in New Jersey.  What I had in mind was a Henry single shot rifle with a brass frame chambered in .45 70 (one of the world’s all-time great cartridges).  Throw in some fancy walnut, and it would be perfect.  It would be just what the doctor ordered.

Hmmmm.  Brass.  Walnut.  .45 70.  The wheels were turning, and that prompted a visit to Henry’s website.  What’s this?  A contact form?  Hmmmm again.  Would it be possible to get a Henry Single Shot in .45 70, brass framed, with hand-selected walnut?  Well, it seems the Henry folks had checked out our ExNotes gun page, and the answer was swift: Yep, they could help me on this.

So, to make a long story a little less long, I’ve been corresponding with Henry USA and I bought one of their brass frame single shot rifles. The good folks at Henry assured me it will have nice walnut. I’m talking to the Henry marketing director to learn a little more about the company tomorrow and I’ll be posting a blog about that in the near future. I’ll soon have a new Henry rifle in the ExNotes armory, and you can bet I’m going to have lots to say about it.

Stay tuned, folks. You’ll read all about it right here.

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