The Riflemans rifle was a full length Winchester and according to the firearms instructor who taught Conners to handle it, he not only was fast, but accurate with either hand.
From the May 1960 issue of Guns
TV's BIG MAN-FAST RIFLE
By ROOD REDWING
Hollywood Gun Coach
CHUCK CONNORS of TV's record-busting western, "The Rifleman," is a big man in more ways than one. He is the star of a simple yet widely appealing program that is never far from the top of TV ratings and that seems destined to go on forever; he is six feet six, plus hat and boot heels; and the way he handles a Model 92 Winchester lever action has been the biggest enigma in the gun kingdom. What is the secret of his machine-gun speed?
This is the story of that rifle and how he shoots it. And I'm the man who should know. I taught him. But first let's get acquainted with Chuck Connors.Something happened to American men in the late fifties.. They got taller. In the roaring twenties, Wallace Reed at six feet two was the tallest man in the movies. In sports, coaches realized full well the potential value of height, in basketball and elsewhere; but most of them felt that it was an unrealized, maybe unrealizable, potential. Most of
the tall boys, they said, were all length and no breadth, all reach and no rhythm, lacking in speed, stamina, and muscular coordination. Today-what a difference! There is hardly a basketball team in the collegiate circuit that doesn't have at least one star towering six-six or better; football
players run nearly as tall; so do the track and field athletes. And these men are not great in height only. They have the speed, the coordination, the lightning reflexes that match those of their smaller brethren.
Are you wondering what sports have to do with this story? Well, Chuck Connors came to TV-movie stardom by way of professional baseball. I saw Chuck play first 2nd base for the Los Angeles Angels, and I spotted him then as one of the handiest big men I had even seen. He covered a lot of infield, and he could reach anything thrown within ten feet of him. Chuck had still another advantage in baseball. Imagine yourself a catcher, with something this big thundering at you. Block the plate? Not me, brother. He
can have it! I'll tag the small ones. There was something working against him, too, in baseball. He couldn't take the game quite as seriously as some
do. He thought it was fun. There's the story about the time when he hit a homer and covered most of the ground between second and home with a series of front flips and handsprings. That must have been something to see: six feet six of first baseman doing cartwheels around the base
paths.
When Chuck's TV producers cast him as "The Rifleman," they called me in to coach him in rifle handling. Having seen Chuck play baseball, I knew he had the coordination needed for the kind of rifle work the part demanded; and when I saw him handle that Winchester .44 carbine before instruction, I knew he was no novice. He knew the rifle from muzzle to butt-plate, and he knew how to shoot it. But the part demanded that he be able to shoot it as fast as a fast man can handle a revolver-and that's a big order.
It's not only a big order; it takes a big man to fill it. I mean that literally. Chuck's rifle is standard in size, with a 20" barrel. A man needs to be well over six feet to have the arm length to handle that rifle as Connors handles it. (As it happens, there are three real rifle-handling experts among the stars in Hollywood. They are John Wayne, who did his stuff in John Ford's "StageCoach;" Don Murray, whom I taught for the 20th Century Fox picture "From Hell To Texas;" and Chuck Connors, "The Rifleman."
Each of these men is well over six feet three inches, and each, has the manual dexterity of a cat. There is also Steve McQueen, of TV's "Wanted: Dead Or Alive;" but Steve's "rifle" lacks a lot of being standard.) The first thing Chuck said to me after we were introduced was, "Do you think I should handle the rifle right handed-or'left?" Now if I were a baseball coach and a rooky asked me whether he should bat right- or left-handed, maybe I wouldn't be so startled. But guns are, for the most part, right-handed tools. True, this Model 92 lever action Winchester can be worked with either hand, since it's a top ejector, but ... why? Was
Connors left handed ? I tried to remember how he played baseball.
He must have read my thoughts. He said, "I was a switch hitter, remember? At most things, I'm as good with one hand as the
other." Not many people are truly ambidextrous,
but Chuck is. And I mean dexterous-in the sense of speed and skill. Add this to his size and speed and power, and all I say is, if any one of my Indian Chief ancestors had had a tribe of braves like Conners, complete with rifles, we'd still own the country!
Remembering baseball gave Chuck the answer to his own question. He grinned. "So why not be a switch hitter with the rifle, too?
Let's learn Both ways." So that's what we did. It has its values, on
the program. Connors can shoot around the right or left side of any cover, for instance. Did you think our cover picture was reversed? It isn't. Connors shoots either-handed.
The Winchester carbine with the "loop" lever is not an easy rifle to handle. This type of looped lever was first used by John Wayne
in "Stage Coach;" but Wayne's rifle was shortened to a barrel length of well under 18 inches; Chuck's is 20. But the problems didn't bother Connors. He learned as fast as JerryLewis learned to handle a revolver, and Jerry had been my fastest pupil. Chuck's "pilot" show with the rifle was to
be a Four Star western under the Dick Powell banner. According to the script, he was to rapid fire the rifle-really rapid. What we
wanted was nine shots in about 10 seconds and speed like that with the lever action Winchester requires some doing. Slam that lever out and back fast, and you can drive that sharp trigger right through your trigger finger
before you know it. And having a high priced star laid up with a punctured and well bandaged gun hand is not conducive to efficient program production. This had to be avoided.
This is the way to do it. With the trigger finger completely outside the lever, swing the lever forward and back with the other three
fingers. Not until the lever is all the way back should the trigger finger curl in to trigger the shot. Whether fast or slow, this is the way to
do it; but to attain the speed we were seeking, the sequence of movements has to be lightning fast and completely automatic.
Chuck practiced, slowly at first, then speeding it up. Needless to say, he was dry-firing. Later, he used blanks; still later, ball ammo.
The day before the picture was shot, Chuck could fire nine shots faster than you can read this sentence. On silhouette targets, he could
score all hits all of the time, and fairly tight groups most of the time. He's better than that now. He can make groups that would
shame all but the best of hunters. But I was nervous. It's one thing to shoot well in practice; it's something else to remember all you've learned and keep your reflexes working when the cameras are rolling. I needn't have worried. Chuck shot the scene in one "take"-no slips, no stage fright, no "misfires." There's no surer way to make yourself popular with a producer.
After the shooting, Chuck's boss asked me if there was any danger of Chuck being hurt
doing that kind of shooting. I said there definitely was danger, and explained that trigger. through-the-finger business_ The next question
was, "How can the danger be avoided?" The answer was-to make the rifle fire automatically through the action of the lever. I
said, "It can be done, and the Stembridge gunsmiths can do it; But it will cost you." He said, "What's cost? This is insurance. At what
we pay Connors, what will it cost if he's crippled ?"
So we went to work on the rifle. At first glance, you'd say the problem was not a tough one. You'd think that, if the trigger were somehow held back in firing position, the rifle would fire when the lever snapped home. But -it won't work that way. To fire the cartridge, the hammer must snap down on the firing pin. With the trigger held back, this doesn't happen. The hammer eases onto the pin, and there's no impact-no shot. Accepting the fact that the rifle has to be triggered, we had to work out a way to trigger
it with something other than Chuck's finger.
The setscrew installed through
the trigger guard part of the lever can be adjusted to strike and trip the trigger at exactly the right time-provided, of course, that the trigger action is adjusted properly to work right under this kind of triggering. This is a
ticklish job, made more so by the fact that the rifle must be convertible to normal manual operation simply by retracting the screw out of contact with the trigger. But it was done, and the results speak for themselves.
Another problem which looks simple until you try it is that trick Chuck uses of swing. cocking the rifle. Did you think that the looped lever was all that was needed for that maneuver? It isn't. Take an "as is" rifle and swing it as Chuck does, and the rifle is upside down at the very instant the to be loaded cartridge is released to slide into the. chamber. What happens? The cartridge falls in the dirt and you come down with an unloaded rifle.
My drawing shows the solution. A spring loaded plunger is installed, which works in and out above the chamber and acts as a cartridge stop when
the rifle is in its upside down position. It looks simple now, but it didn't look so simple when the pencil first touched the drawing board. Anyway, it works; and now Chuck can rapid fire his .44 Winchester without danger
to his hands, and he can swing-cock and spin cock it without losing a cartridge.
What is swing-cocking, and how is it done? Swing cocking is one of the many ways to cock a rifle with one hand. The rifle is held about waist high. The barrel is allowed to drop, causing the stock to rise out of the
hand, with three fingers holding the lever at what would be the hub of a forward spin. When the rifle is upside down and the well known click reports that the cocking action is completed (third from top) the rifle is
forcibly swung back to its original position horizontal 'and is ready to fire. This cocking maneuver can be done with the regular rectangular lever as well as with the loop.
Another maneuver which Chuck uses at the beginning of every "Rifleman" episode is spin cocking. Here the rifle needs the doughnut loop.
In this picturesque bit of gun legerdemain, the rifle is held so that the forearm is parallel to the ground. Three fingers inside the loop force it down and forward while tilting the barrel upward. The thumb and trigger finger must both be straight The rifle is forced into a back spin, using the loop as a hub. The muzzle of the rifle should pass close to the armpit and move in a circle to the front. Grasp the loop when the flat side comes
back into its original position and, when the stock settles into your hand, you have completed the spin-cocking maneuver. This is very hard to do with a stock rifle with the regular rectangular lever, since only one finger, the ring finger, must spin the rifle; but it can be done.
Connors' rifle can also be fanned. Fanning revolvers is strictly Hollywood stuff; none of the real gunfighters used it in combat, with good reason. The primary reason is that, when you are trying to hold a revolver dead on a target, slapping the gun hard enough to knock the hammer back is not exactly conducive to accurate aim. You can learn to fan with fair
accuracy, with enough practice; but it is a complicated two-handed operation at best, one which can easily go wrong. When you are
shooting for keeps as the old timers were, you use the simple, surefire methods. Fanning the rifle makes at least a little more sense than fanning a sixgun, since it can be held more firmly, is less easy to knock out of
line. First, lever a shell into the chamber. Then ease the hammer down. Now, with trigger held back and the buttstock braced between
forearm and hip, fan the hammer back with the other hand. I don't know what advantage you could possibly gain by this method of shooting-but it's showy, and Hollywood likes showy things.
The things Connors does with his rifle are showy too, but don't let that fool you-Chuck is a rifleman as well as a fancy rifle handler. He fires blanks for TV, naturally; but he can amaze you also with live ammo, whether rapid
fire or with deliberate sighting. He's fast; and he hits what he shoots at-which is the point of all shooting as well as the point of ~
"The Rifleman" stories. ~