A friend of mine brought over two lever-action carbines yesterday, and we gave them a try in the backyard range.

• One was a Winchester 94, new production, in .30-30.
  
• The other was a Marlin 336, also new production, in .35 Remington.

Both carbines had the factory iron sights.

Uncertain of how they were sighted in, we put them on paper at 25 yards. The Winchester was dead-on at that range. We both noted that the sight picture was pretty quickly acquired on the 94, which featured the standard semi-buckhorn rear with an additional white triangle pointing to the center notch. We also noted that the trigger on the 94 seemed unusually heavy, although we were able to shoot it with some accuracy regardless.

The Marlin 336 in .35 Remington was another story. The sights were off, shooting significantly low and to the left. It took three notches on the rear sight wedge to correct the elevation, and a tap on the right side of the front sight blade brought the windage to "acceptable." We found the 336 to be more difficult to fire with accuracy. The sight picture was slower to acquire, and the groups were somewhat larger than those of the .30-30. We encountered some functional failures with the Marlin, attributable to my friend short-stroking the lever in two cases. The other type of failure was that the lever wouldn't fully close, but would get to within a few millimeters of "closed" and hang up. It required some fiddling to fully close the action and bring the round into battery, none of which contributed to our group sizes.

We were able to get both rifles onto a six-inch square at 90 yards, which was sufficient for local hunting.

I made two observations for my friend:

1) Both leverguns need to be used more and "worn in," and
2) Our old eyes are not favored by use of iron sights.

I especially recommended that he get a scope for the 336, which is already drilled and tapped for such.

-AaronB