Mike Irwin
Staff
Winchester certainly offered the half magazine as a custom order item.
At the time when your rifle was made, you could mix and match just about anything you wanted in a custom order gun, from barrel length to profile to stock options to sights.
But, they wouldn't have offered it as it presents on your rifle.
Had it been ordered as a half magazine from the factory, Winchester wouldn't have put the barrel on it with the mounting points for a full magazine tube, they would have used one of the half magazine barrels.
They also would have used the half magazine button cap, NOT the end cap used on full magazines.
Take a look at the overall condition of your rifle. It wasn't a wall flower. It was a hard working, hard living, hard used gun.
It looks as if it was used day in and day out for decades.
Given the condition of the rest of the gun, it's very possible that the full-length magazine tube was somehow damaged. It likely went to a local gunsmith, who did the quickest, most logical thing to do with it. He reconfigured it to look like another gun that Winchester offered, one that doubtless would have been familiar to him.
As for the steer? I also sincerely doubt that that was a Winchester factory job. It's a bit on the crude side, and all of the carved stocks that I've ever seen from Winchester (I'll admit, only a very very few) were done on select walnut blanks, pieces of wood with absolutely beautiful figure even for those times when beautifully figured walnut was pretty common.
At the time when your rifle was made, you could mix and match just about anything you wanted in a custom order gun, from barrel length to profile to stock options to sights.
But, they wouldn't have offered it as it presents on your rifle.
Had it been ordered as a half magazine from the factory, Winchester wouldn't have put the barrel on it with the mounting points for a full magazine tube, they would have used one of the half magazine barrels.
They also would have used the half magazine button cap, NOT the end cap used on full magazines.
Take a look at the overall condition of your rifle. It wasn't a wall flower. It was a hard working, hard living, hard used gun.
It looks as if it was used day in and day out for decades.
Given the condition of the rest of the gun, it's very possible that the full-length magazine tube was somehow damaged. It likely went to a local gunsmith, who did the quickest, most logical thing to do with it. He reconfigured it to look like another gun that Winchester offered, one that doubtless would have been familiar to him.
As for the steer? I also sincerely doubt that that was a Winchester factory job. It's a bit on the crude side, and all of the carved stocks that I've ever seen from Winchester (I'll admit, only a very very few) were done on select walnut blanks, pieces of wood with absolutely beautiful figure even for those times when beautifully figured walnut was pretty common.