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Experts are still baffled by 132-year-old rifle found leaning against a tree in the Nevada
Daily Mail ^ | 7/20/15 | Dailymail.com Reporter

Posted on 07/20/2015 11:15:44 AM PDT by Kartographer

A 132-year-old rifle discovered on a remote rocky outcrop in the heart of the Grand Basin National Park in Nevada is still a mystery as researchers try to find more answers.

The Winchester rifle, which was found unloaded in November, has been shipped to the Cody Firearms Museum in Wyoming where it is temporarily on display among 7,000 other guns.

Museum workers said there are no records showing who owned the rifle and that its lifter was removed making it able to only fire a single shot at once, according to Fox News.

(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; History
KEYWORDS: 1873; 1882; banglist; godsgravesglyphs; greatbasin; greatbasinnp; guns; history; model1873; nationalpark; nevada; park; rifle; rifles; treasure; winchester; winchester1873; winchesterrifle
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To: mylife

This is interesting


41 posted on 07/20/2015 12:24:44 PM PDT by StoneWall Brigade (MARANATHA)
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To: Tijeras_Slim; SolidRedState

Good answer on the cartridge by Tijeras_Slim.

http://www.outdoorlife.com/blogs/gun-shots/gun-week-forgotten-winchester-1873-great-basin-national-park

Although it was unloaded, we retrieved a UMC .44 WCF cartridge in the stock, dating between 1887 and 1911.


42 posted on 07/20/2015 12:27:59 PM PDT by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: SolidRedState
“The rifle in question has a tubular magazine located under the barrel, as do many other lever action, slide action and semiautomatic firearms. Partially working the action allows a spring in the tubular magazine to push a cartridge back onto the lifter. Continuing to work the action allows the lifter to lift the cartridge up in line with the barrel so it can be pushed into the chamber. So far as I know, it’s a legitimate term, although there may be others.” *********************************************************** Correct. That explains the lifter. But it looks like an odd combination of rifles. In pictures of the right side of the rifle, it is a side load, and it has the under barrel magazine. In the xray it shows a rear tube feed with a cartridge still in the tube in the stock. Looks like a .45 long colt or maybe a .44 . Was the 1873 capable of being loaded either way? I am only familiar with replicas and modern lever guns, which I have only seen to be either one way or the other.

The X-ray actually shows perhaps a cartridge in the cleaning rod buttstock storage. The 44 WCF and the 38-40 WCF rifles had that buttstock storage. If it had a missing brass lifter the tubular magazine wouldn't secure any cartridges, they'd simply fall out the bottom. Probably used the cleaning rod storage to carry extra rounds. Still not sure why the brass lifter was missing. It's a pretty integral part of the action.
43 posted on 07/20/2015 12:35:23 PM PDT by rickomatic
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To: Kartographer

That’s hilarious!


44 posted on 07/20/2015 12:36:55 PM PDT by Squeako (If you ask yourself, "How did this happen?", the answer is likely "decades of communist activity".)
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To: Inyo-Mono
The tube in the stock was used to store a cleaning rod in the .44 WCF (44-40) 1873 Model Winchester. The “lifter” is normally called a “carrier” by those, like me, that shoot these old rifles.

I get it. I've carried a carbine most of my life. The carrier, or the tray... I was trying to equate the part to the corresponding mechanisms within a modern carbine... a Winchester 30/30, or my current Marlin 45/70.

Thanks.

45 posted on 07/20/2015 12:37:04 PM PDT by roamer_1 (Globalism is just socialism in a business suit.)
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To: Kirkwood

A man was teaching his son to hunt. He wanted his young 13-year-old son to set up his shots carefully, not just pop off a bunch and hope for the best; so the father removed the rifle’s lifter so that the boy could only discharge one cartridge at a time. And so the man and his son went hunting, leaving the lifter back in the man’s one-room house to be put back into the rifle when the boy matured a bit and learned to hunt the right way.

One day, while out on a hunt with his father, the young man, being easily distracted as youth are wont to become, put his gun up against the tree and went exploring around. When his dad finally caught up with him, he asked him, “Where’s your rifle, son?” The boy said, “Oh, it’s over there up against the tree, Dad.” His father said, “Which tree? Where?” “Over there, Dad!” “I don’t see it, son. Let’s go get it.”

So they looked, but the boy forgot where exactly it was, and the trees all looked dauntingly similar. And the boy forgot how far and in which direction he had traveled. So the boy and his father looked all afternoon, but they eventually had to go home because Mama had a pot roast in the stove for supper.

They tried over the next few months to find that rifle, but they never did find it. Then, 132 years later, the rifle was found by a society that hates guns, loves sodomy and frowns upon fatherhood. The gun was happy to be found but went into a major depressive episode later because the free and wild society that offered so much promise of Liberty to Americans and the world was turned into a sniveling little European nanny state. The rifle pined for the day when he could finally go hunting with a free child and his loving father again, but he found that, like the Constitution that protected the boy’s freedom, he was put under glass and consigned to a slow spiritual death by misuse and general abhorrence.


46 posted on 07/20/2015 12:48:37 PM PDT by WKTimpco
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To: KrisKrinkle

Seems to be a legitimate term. I’m always suspicious when media-ites start talking firearms.


47 posted on 07/20/2015 12:53:49 PM PDT by IronJack
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To: 21twelve

Mine taught me the same thing. I so much wanted a semi but I started with a Stevens bolt action 410 and an Ithica single shot lever action .22. Both made me appreciate a bullet. After all, .22 was almost 50 cents for a box of 50! We did get to shoot almost as much as we wanted but we only got to carry 10 rounds in our pockets when we hunted and never got to bet more than one box down from the shelf. .410 was a lot more expensive so it was bought by the box and rationed out.

We were taught to conserve resources by two people who grew up in the Depression. That memory stuck with them and it stuck to me.


48 posted on 07/20/2015 12:58:25 PM PDT by Sequoyah101
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To: Kartographer

Broken. Or lost a piece during field stripping,


49 posted on 07/20/2015 12:58:41 PM PDT by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
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To: Squeako; Old Sarge
"That’s hilarious!"

No it isn't it's:


50 posted on 07/20/2015 1:00:20 PM PDT by Kartographer ("We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.")
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To: BenLurkin

He’ll feel that come pay day!


51 posted on 07/20/2015 1:01:51 PM PDT by Kartographer ("We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.")
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To: Sequoyah101

I had the Ithica single shot lever action. I was a way better shot than my buddies with their semi-autos.


52 posted on 07/20/2015 1:02:42 PM PDT by 21twelve (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2185147/posts It is happening again.)
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To: 21twelve

Me too. Got it for Christmas when I was 12. Loved that little rifle.


53 posted on 07/20/2015 1:07:33 PM PDT by Inyo-Mono
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To: WKTimpco

That is a keeper. Best post of the day!


54 posted on 07/20/2015 1:08:34 PM PDT by Inyo-Mono
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To: Kartographer
Of course there's no record of a fire damaging the gun. It's obvious what happened. The gun owner got into a shooting fight with alien grays. The grays zapped the guy with their zapper cannon, dissolving him. Then the grays, not understanding how to work a rifle, left it behind.

So obvious.
55 posted on 07/20/2015 1:12:53 PM PDT by righttackle44 (Take scalps. Leave the bodies as a warning.)
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To: IronJack

“I’m always suspicious when media-ites start talking firearms.”

Too often when they write about something I know about, I find they’ve got something wrong. That makes me suspicious of everything they write.


56 posted on 07/20/2015 1:13:55 PM PDT by KrisKrinkle (Blessed be those who know the and breadth of "ignorance. individual be those who don't.)
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To: Inyo-Mono; 21twelve

I still have mine. I can put my hands on it in just a few seconds from where I sit at my desk. It still has a big gouge in the stock from where I fell climbing up a mountain 55 years ago this fall. I got mine on my fifth birthday. It was a cold December evening in a cabin lit only by a fire. I remember it like yesterday. True story.

Screen getting blurry. Gotta go.


57 posted on 07/20/2015 1:14:42 PM PDT by Sequoyah101
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To: righttackle44

Has anyone looked up old maps of the area? Maybe there used to be a lake there. Boating accidents aren’t a new thing........ ;)


58 posted on 07/20/2015 1:22:55 PM PDT by rickomatic
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To: Old Sarge

In sound mind and two broke legs...


59 posted on 07/20/2015 1:40:41 PM PDT by packrat35 (Pelosi is only on loan to the world from Satan. Hopefully he will soon want his baby killer back)
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To: StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; decimon; 1010RD; 21twelve; 24Karet; 2ndDivisionVet; ...
Another update of the fifty or so stories from last year.

60 posted on 07/22/2015 10:32:35 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (What do we want? REGIME CHANGE! When do we want it? NOW)
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