The Weaver Stance

The Weaver stance seems odd at first, and can be tricky if you are cross-dominant, but it allows for excellent recoil control and reacquisition of the target in your sights.  This means that, after the gun bounces up a bit from firing a round, it is much easier to align it with the target again very quickly. In Weaver, you are standing with the shoulder of your gun hand back a bit from the target and your dominant foot back a bit as well. You hold the gun toward the target with your upper body at a 45-degree angle to it, and bend both elbows. At first, this seems very unstable, but the secret to the Weaver is the isometric nature of the stance. When you grip the gun, push forward with your gun hand, and pull back with your other hand; this push-pull grip makes the gun bounce down from the recoil and end up right back on target! It also makes for extremely strong recoil control, and would allow even a small woman to handle a .38 easily.

It is very difficult to describe the Weaver stance in words, so please ask someone to demonstrate it to you before you try it. The most important part of the stance is the push-pull isometric grip, so as long as that is understood, the rest should come quite easily.

Editors Note: Like any other martial, mental or physical skill, to master a stance and to become fast, accurate and natural with any shooting technique you must practice.

Safety Note: Practice your draw and presentation with an unloaded firearm or a dummy gun.  It is a good idea to remove the ammo and magazine from the training area.  Do a chamber check and verify empty, every time you pick up the gun.  Someone else or even you may have loaded it. 

There are 3 common hand gun stances.  For more information see Shooting Stance.

Origin of the Term White Hunter

According to Brian Herne, from his book WHITE HUNTERS, the name WHITE hunter came about in this way:  By several reliable accounts it was the chance meeting of hunter Alan Black and a reckless amateur hunter known as “D,” the fiery Lord Delamere, that led to the term, “white hunter”. Delamare had employed the youthful Alan Black to help out on one of his Somaliland safaris in the late 1890s. When Delamere settled in British East Africa he purchased a very large acreage of ranching country. 

“Black was, therefore,” according to veteran hunter Donald Ker, of Ker and Downey Safaris, Nairobi, “the first white man to operate in a professional capacity taking out hunting parties for a living.” And, Ker adds, “Black was one of the best that ever lived.”

Great American Gun Makers
Winchester Repeating Arms Company

Winchester is a noteworthy name applied to a very long and historically significant line of firearms and ammunition products.  Winchester has been a part of American history, since it inception as the Winchester Repeating Arms Company of New Haven Connecticut, in 1866.  The founder and namesake of the company was Oliver F. Winchester, who was actually a shirt maker, who became a financier and amazingly had no practical knowledge of firearms or their manufacture.  Winchester's experience and understanding of corporate organization and general business acumen was outstanding and he became a major player in the arms making industry of the late 19th century and developed a great repeating rifle and a very large and successful firearms company.

Oliver Winchester's interest in arms making was the result of his purchase of 80 shares of stock, in the Volcanic Repeating Firearms Company, which had been organized to  manufacture the improved version of the Hunt-Jennings Volitional Repeater, which had just been redesigned by Smith & Wesson.  In 1857, the Volcanic Company went bankrupt and Oliver Winchester purchased the companies remaining assets in an attempt to recover his investment.  He promptly went to work and organized a new stock company named the New Haven Arms Company, installing himself as the company president and owner of 800 shares of the new companies stock.  New Haven Arms Company continued to manufacture Volcanic Arms products, but with little success.  

In 1858, Winchester directed one of his employees, B. Tyler Henry, to work on improving the Volcanic Repeater and to develop a new repeating rifle and cartridge.  These developments eventually lead to the Henry Rifle of 1860 and further lead to the success of Oliver Winchester's company.  About 14,000 Model 1860 Henry's were manufactured, the model ended in 1866.  In 1866 the New Haven Arms Company was reorganized and renamed the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.  Thereafter, all firearms and ammunition by the company were simply known as Winchesters.

The first of the line of firearms from the Winchester company was the Model 1866.  For all practical purposes it was an 1860 Henry, that incorporated some improvements by another of Winchesters men, Nelson King.  The Model 1866 by King & Henry included a hinged loading gate that allowed ammunition cartridges to be loaded into the magazine from the receiver's breech end, instead of loading them at the muzzle end in the older style removable magazine tube.  This loading gate, still in use today, allowed the magazine tube to be completely closed and a conventional wooden fore end to be used.  The closed magazine reduced fouling and decreased the time it took to reload.  It also made the handy lever action rifle easy to "top off" on the fly, without having to "face down" the muzzle, and allowed the shooter to insert cartridges without taking their eyes off the target.

With these two great American arms, the Winchester Repeating Arms Company established itself as one of the "Great American Arms Makers" and one of the worlds leading suppliers of arms and ammunition.  A position the company has retained for over 144 years.  Many people still feel that the greatest arms in the world have the Winchester name on them.

An American Legend: The Wild West

Compiled by Valerie A. Peters

Since its beginnings in 1866, Winchester has sustained the romance and legacy of its remarkable heritage as an American original. Winchester firearms accompanied American settlers as they moved west to seek their fortunes in a virgin land. Winchester's image became one with that of the cowboy, the Indian, the lawman, the
pioneer, the mesa, the mountains, the desert, and the grandeur of the west. Small wonder that Winchester is called "The American Legend." The famous horse and rider logo used by Winchester on its products symbolizes that legacy. 

The Winchester Repeating Arms Company produced the first firearm to bear its name in 1866 - the Model 66. In 1873, the company began to expand its operations to include
increased ammunition manufacture. To coincide with the introduction of its new Model 73, the company claimed it was "prepared to manufacture 250,000 cartridges per day, embracing every size and description of a quality superior to anything heretofore offered."  By 1875, cartridge capacity had been stepped up to a million a day. The
decision to expand ammunition production was one of the major policy changes in the history of Winchester. It marked the first step toward making the company one of the largest and best-known manufacturers of ammunition in the world. 

Smokeless powder entered the market in the 1890s. The adoption of smokeless powder for ammunition was one of the major innovations affecting the entire history of firearms, and started a new phase in the development of guns and ammunition. Winchester began to produce smokeless cartridges, but did not reduce its offerings of black powder shotshells because, as was the case with metallic ammunition, smokeless powder did not eliminate the demand for black-powder loads.  

Winchester owes its fame to many sources. However, one man did much to spread the
fame of the Winchester firearm more than any other -- Buffalo Bill. While Buffalo Bill was
never employed as a shooter by Winchester to publicize the company's products, he
directly and indirectly did much to increase the company's exposure. As the hero of
fictionalized Western dime novels, he was often armed by the authors with a Winchester
rifle in his fights with the Indians and the bad guys. In the famous Wild West Show, he and his fellow marksmen, including Annie Oakley, used Winchester rifles and ammunition. The Winchester Repeating Arms Company did not fail to publicize the fact that its products were the choice of Buffalo Bill and his fellow star performers. Theodore Roosevelt was another one of the famous folks that used Winchester products and publicized that fact.  

Winchester Today

The company who brought to life "the Gun that Won the West" is the same company that today continues to supply sportsmen with some of the best sporting arms and ammunition in the world.   In December, 1980, the company's board of directors authorized the restructuring of the Winchester Group to allow Olin to better focus more of the company's resources on Winchester's sporting and defense ammunition business.  With this restructuring, Winchester's U.S. sporting arms business, which had been part of the company for nearly half a century, was set up as a freestanding operation and in In July, 1981, it was sold to the U.S. Repeating Arms Company in New Haven, Connecticut.  

U.S. Repeating Arms Company or USRAC now produces Winchester brand rifles and shotguns under license from Olin Corporation.  In 1991, Olin's Winchester Division again played a part during a war. When the Persian Gulf War broke out, Winchester provided a large amount of the ammunition used by U.S. troops during this conflict. 

Winchester firearms and the U.S. Repeating Arms Company

U.S. Repeating Arms (Winchester Rifles and Shotguns) is the manufacturer of all current Winchester brand rifles and shotguns.  USRAC is a licensed partner of the Olin Corporation. Olin is the parent company of the Winchester ammunition company. There are a number of other companies, besides U.S. Repeating Arms, that are licensed to use the Winchester brand name. Each is a partner with the Winchester Ammunition division of Olin Corporation, and each is committed to the tradition of quality, reliability and excellent service that has made the Winchester brand legendary. 

A number of years ago the U.S. Repeating Arms Company acquired the rights to produce Winchester rifles and shotguns. At the same time they also acquired the entire manufacturing facility in New Haven, Connecticut. This is the same factory where Winchester rifles and shotguns have been made for nearly a century and a half — beginning when Oliver Winchester himself started the company that bears his name. An entirely new factory — the most modern firearms manufacturing facility in the world — was completed in 1994 right on Winchester Avenue in New Haven.

Today, all Winchester brand firearms are made by or for U.S. Repeating Arms Company. Most are made in the New Haven, Connecticut factory. On occasion, some are sourced to other facilities world-wide.  U.S. Repeating Arms is part of a world-wide company with facilities and associations with companies in Europe and Japan. Some special edition and limited edition firearms are currently made in Japan by one of our associated companies (Models: 1886, 1892, 1895, 63, and 52-B). The Super X2 is made in Europe with some parts manufactured in New Haven. The Supreme is still made in Belgium.

Two offices are now used by Winchester Rifles and Shotguns to conduct business. Manufacturing and firearms service are performed at our 225,000 square foot factory in New Haven. Customer Service and corporate functions are done at our second office in Utah.  Surrounded by the Wasatch mountains, just a few miles outside of the town of Morgan in a community known as Mountain Green.

Historic Winchester Rifles

History is worth repeating. So Winchester (US Repeating Arms Company) still makes versions of some of the greatest Winchesters rifles of all time. They are available in either Limited Edition versions (production held to limited quantities) or Classic Tradition versions (small numbers made year to year).  For more information on Winchester Firearms use the contact information below.

Winchester Arms

USRAC Product Service 
275 Winchester Avenue
New Haven, CT 06511 

Tel 1-800-333-3288 or 1-801-876-2711 

Web URL: http://www.Winchester-Guns.com

Information courtesy of: Winchester Firearms & U.S. Repeating Arms Company

.300 WSM - Winchester Short Magnum

The first new, jointly-developed commercial Rifle Cartridge from Winchester® Ammunition in almost 20 years - and it's going to give big game hunters an unbeatable reason to "go magnum."

Simply put, the new 300 WSM cartridge is designed to deliver 300 Winchester Magnum energy and velocity performance in a short action cartridge and lighter weight rifle.  Using a "short action" not only reduces overall weight, short action rifles will also normally feed better and they cost less money to manufacture.

For starters, the unique geometry of this beltless magnum cartridge delivers the same precise head spacing and high accuracy as cartridges designed for bench rest shooting.  Plus, the WSM's "short & fat" cartridge shape delivers a highly efficient powder burn and quicker cycle time via a much shorter and lighter rifle action with a
standard magnum bolt face diameter.  

So keep an eye out for the NEW Winchester Short Magnum Centerfire Rifle Cartridge with initial firearms manufacturers Browning® & Winchester® - it's definitely the shape of things to come.