Guns Illustrated 2011. Dan Shideler

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СКАЧАТЬ number of shooters appealed to Weatherby, requesting that the company produce a detachable magazine rifle. Weatherby responded with a couple of new offerings in their Vanguard line: the Synthetic DBM (stands for detachable box magazine) and the Sporter DBM. The magazines are made of a durable polymer, which helps to reduce the overall weight of the rifles. The magazines hold three rounds and come with a unique cartridge counter for easy reference in the field. Other features of the Synthetic DBM include a black injection-molded composite Monte Carlo stock, matte black metalwork and a low-density recoil pad. The Sporter DBM has a raised-comb Monte Carlo walnut stock with a satin urethane finish, a rosewood forend and low-luster, matte-blued metalwork. Both rifles weigh 7 lbs. and are available in .25-06 Remington, .270 Winchester and .30-06 Springfield and come with a 24-inch #2 contour barrel, but, again, only in a right hand. configuration

      WINCHESTER REPEATING ARMS

      Winchester has expanded its line of Rifles once again to include a couple of John Browning-designed models from our distant past: the Grade I Model 1895 and the extra light Model 1886. Both of these lever action models have deeply blued receivers and blued steel end caps and are equipped with straight buttplates. Both come with top tang safeties and adjustable buck-horn rear sights. The 1895 is available in .405 Winchester, .30-06 and .30-40 Krag, while the 1896 is available only in .45-70. The Grade I 1895 carries a MSRP of $1,179 and the Grade I 1896 is $1,269. Also new from Winchester is a takedown versison of the 16-inch-barrelled Model 1892 Trapper Carbine, a finely-machined little honey that’s expected to be vailable in short, short, short supply sometime this year.

THE UNLIKELIEST SLEEPER of them all BY DAN SHIDELER

      Back around 1971, when I was just getting interested in guns and shooting, my older cousin Steve Shideler sent me a full-page ad he had clipped from the pages of Guns &Ammos magazine. In the margin of the ad he had penned a brief editorial comment: “HA HA HA!”

      The ad showed two guns, the ugliest things I had ever seen. They looked like some sort of over-and-under rimfire Rifle, but there wasn’t a splinter of wood anywhere on them. Their stocks were made of wire. They apparently had two triggers. And they were headlined “Bronco. No nonsense, hard-working guns without the frills. ”

      Ah, yes, the Garcia Bronco! At the time, I dismissed the Bronco as just another one of those nutty phenomena that appeared with distressing regularity in those days, like Tiny Tim or George McGovern. Time heals all wounds, however, and today the ugly-duckling Bronco is a prime collectible. Don’t believe me? Just try to find one!

      The weird little gun best known as the Garcia Bronco appeared in a number of incarnations in the late 1960s and early to mid-1970s. To begin with, the name “Bronco” wasn’t even unique to the skeleton-stock rifle. Garcia - a major sporting goods distributor - used the name “Bronco” pretty willynilly. In fact, if you wanted to spend a day in the Great Outdoors, you could outfit your Garcia Bronco spinning rod with a Garcia Bronco open-face reel. For good measure you could carry your Garcia Bronco recurve bow and strap on your Garcia Bronco quiver. And if squirrel season was in, you’d better take along your Garcia Bronco rifle.

      The gun later known as the Bronco was first made in 1967 in Accokeek, Maryland, by Firearms International Corporation and wasn’t labeled “Bronco” at all. It came in only one flavor: a 3-1/2 lb., 16-1/2-inch-barreled, solid-frame single-shot .22 rifle. When Garcia bought Firearms International in 1970, they added three more flavors: a single-shot .22 Magnum rifle with pretty much the same dimensions as the .22 LR version; a 4 lb. single-shot .410 shotgun with a somewhat heavier receiver and a 20-inch barrel; and a .22/.410 over-under combo gun with a 20-inch barrel. As Garcia maintained, the Broncos were indeed guns “without the frills.” No truer words were ever spoken.

      My first impressions of the Garcia Bronco were erroneous. The gun did not in fact have two triggers: what I had mistaken for a front trigger was in fact a cocking piece. On the single-shot version, what appeared to be the upper barrel was in fact a pivot rod that allowed the barrel to swing sideways for loading. And the stock wasn’t wire at all but a zinc-alloy casting with a rod-stock insert.

      If the truth be told, the Bronco was nothing more than an updated version of the old Hamilton Model 7 made from 1889 to 1901 by the Hamilton Rifle Company of Plymouth, Michigan. In the Hamilton Model 7, the barrel pivoted to the right away from a standing breech. You stuck a shell in the exposed chamber, swung the barrel to the left to close the action, cocked the striker, and touched ‘er off. It was a simple, low-cost, virtually foolproof system. In fact, the system was so elemental and easy to manufacture that it later appeared in

      Hamilton’s later Model 11 and in the Savage Model 101 single-shot revolver-that-wasn’t-a-revolver. The Hamilton Model 7 was a rather attractive little gun, what with its brilliant nickel plating. The appearance of the Bronco, however, fell somewhat short of brilliant. On the Firearms International models, the pot-metal frame and stock were painted with olive drab or bronze enamel (often incorrectly described as an anodized or powder-coated finish), while the post-1970 Garcia versions were finished in black crinkle paint. The Bronco differed in other details from the Hamilton, too. When the front “trigger” was squeezed back, it simultaneously cocked the coil spring-operated striker and retracted a locating pin that locked the swiveling barrel to the breech. You then swung the barrel to the left, exposing the chamber. A short plunger-style extractor on the right side of the barrel assembly popped out the empty. The safety was a plain, square trigger-locking pushbolt mounted just above the rear of the trigger guard.

      The Bronco’s rear sight was minimal or, as Garcia might put it, “without frills”: a crescent-shaped stamping secured to a barrel lug with a common screw. The Bronco’s sights were thus adjustable for both windage and elevation, often unintentionally, at the same time. The front sight was a stubby, fl at-topped post, protected by two ears like the front sight of an M1 carbine. On the combo version, the rear sight was a more substantial affair that also served as a barrel selector. Pulling the sight up selected the upper rifle barrel. Pushing it down selected the lower shotgun barrel.

      A 1969 Firearms International Bronco, pictured with an old piece of rebar. Rebar is at the top.

      The operative phrase here is “without the frills.”

      For the first few years of its existence, the Bronco was a fixed-barrel rifle. After a few years, however, it morphed into a takedown version. To take down a Bronco, you swung a flimsy, stamped lever located on the right side of the receiver backward. This in turn rotated an integral cam inside the receiver, disengaging it from an oblique cut in the pivoting barrel extension. The whole barrel assembly then pulled off toward the front. That’s the easy part. Reassembling the Bronco is a different matter entirely. In fact, I monkeyed with mine for perhaps 10 minutes, during which the barrel extension stubbornly refused to reseat itself in the receiver. After filling the atmosphere with a thick purple haze of profanity, I realized that the oblique cut had to be facing downward and the lever cam had to be in its full rearward position for the barrel extension to fully enter its recess. Swinging the lever forward relocked the whole works.

      If you’re trying to disassemble a Bronco, you’ll quickly notice that there aren’t many screws in sight. The gun is held together mostly by pins, all of which have to be laboriously driven out by hand. This may account for the fact that relatively few Broncos have survived: it was easier to throw them away when they broke rather than fool around with them. Detailed serial number records for the Bronco haven’t survived, but the guns can be approximately dated nevetheless. Firearms International models don’t bear the Bronco name, and until 1969 they didn’t have serial numbers, either. Serial-numbered, unnamed Firearms International models were made in 1969 and 1970. When Garcia bought Firearms СКАЧАТЬ