FAMILY: Big Boy Series  MODEL: Big Boy Steel Carbine  TYPE: Rifle  ACTION: Lever Action  FINISH: Blue  STOCK/FRAME: Wood Stock  STOCK/GRIPS: American Walnut  CALIBER/GAUGE: 45 Colt  CAPACITY: 7+1  BARREL: 16.5"  OVERALL LENGTH: 34"  RATE-OF-TWIST: 1-in-38"  RECEIVER: Blue  SIGHTS: FS:Brass Bead/RS:Semi-Buckhorn  SAFETY: Transfer Bar  ADDL INFO: Checkered Straight-Style Stock  ADDL INFO: Round Barrel  ADDL INFO: Rubber Buttplate  DRILLED/TAPPED: Yes
If you have a revolver chambered in .357 Magnum, .41 Magnum, .45 Long Colt, or .44 Magnum and you want a rifle for chambered for the exact same caliber, your best bet is a lever-action
By its very design, a lever-action shoots faster than its bolt-action and break-action rifle counterparts, which make it suitable for both home defense and hunting. The only real weakness of the lever-action design is that it uses a tubular magazine which shouldn't be loaded with ammo that uses pointed bullets.
Lightweight, easy to maneuver, easy to shoot well, and with more than enough barrel length to maximize the ballistic capabilities of any big bore revolver cartridge, the Model 1894 is as good as any modern lever-action rifle despite the fact that its earliest version was introduced by Marlin in 1894.
But if there's one really good thing about this rifle, it's that it makes recoil a non-issue. A significant number of shooters have trouble handling the recoil of full-house .44 Magnum loads and hot .45 Long Colt loads even more so, e.g. stuff like the +P Deer Grenade load Buffalo Bore sells.
The aforementioned Deer Grenade load utilizes a 260-grain medium-cast gas-checked lead hollow point bullet which can be propelled out of the Marlin Model 1894's 20-inch barrel with a velocity of around 1,890 feet per second, generating muzzle energy of around 2,063 foot-pounds of force, more than enough to take from a hundred yards away.
Out of a Ruger Super Redhawk, the same Deer Grenade load has quite the kick which recoil-shy folks find intolerable. But out of the Marlin Model 1894, shooting be a real pleasurable experience.
And if a single round somehow isn't enough for whatever purpose you may have, the Model 1894 comes with a magazine capacity of 9 or 10 rounds depending on the cartridge it's chambered for. These can be fired in rapid succession very easily because again, the Model 1894 is a lever-action. Too bad the company stopped production two years ago, but you can still find one if you check out our list below.
