Long Range Match

At some CAS competitions you will find “side matches”, one of which is the long range match. Rules and regulations for these matches will vary from comp to comp so it would only be speculation if we tried to explain them here.

What we can discuss here are the beautiful old rifles and the cartridges that they fire. Most of the old time rifles from the cowboy era are being copied by modern day manufacturers, so lets take a look at what’s out there;

Lever Action Rifles

There is no reason why you couldn’t shoot any of the rifles discussed on the “Guns & Ammo” page, but you can get to shoot real rifle cartridges in this category, for those you need a proper rifle such as a Winchester 1876, or 1886, and Marlin weigh in with their 1895 which is still in current production. Getting yourself a genuine nineteenth century 1876 or 1886 is going to get pretty spendy, up to mortgage level in some cases! The good news is that modern clones are available; Uberti make a copy of the 1876 in the original chambering, such as 40-65, 45-75 and 50-95. One of these will set you back about £1200. Winchester/Browning still make the 1886 and one of those will be about £1200 and up. Chiappa have also started to make copies of the 1886, also in that price bracket, A Pedersoli is another option, again, similar in price. If your wallet can’t stand that much of a kicking, there is always a Marlin 1895, one of the new Cowboy models will set you back £900 new, but you can pick up one of the old models for much less than that.

Single Shot Rifles

There is a surprisingly large number of single shot rifles to choose from these days, just about all the old American makes are being reproduced by modern manufacturers. Pedersoli have long made copies of the Remington Rolling Block and Sharps 1874, and now they have started making copies of the Winchester 1885 High Wall. Uberti also make copies of the High Wall, and also the Low Wall and the Trap Door Springfield. Prices for these Italian made copies start at about £900 and go up to just short of £3000 for some of the more exotic Sharps.

From American manufacturers you can get modern copies of the 1874 Sharps, 1875 Ballard, 1885 Winchester, Stevens 44, Remington Rolling Block, the Peabody rifle and the 1877 & 1878 Sharps rifles. Some of these rifles are works of art, almost a piece of jewellery, and this is reflected in the price however, if you can live with a “basic” model then you might only have to spend something like $1500.

Cartridges

With the huge resurgence of interest in these rifles in America there is a large choice of olde worlde cartridges available to choose from, from 32-40 up to the monstrous 50-140, with a whole host in between. The components are all available from various manufacturers, but Buffalo Arms is a splendid one stop shop to try first.

We’ll explain the cartridge designations for you, just in case! You will see cartridges like .45-110, this translates to .45 calibre and a powder charge of 110 grains of Black Powder. You might see the same cartridge designated as .45-110-550, number at the end is the bullet weight in grains, you may also see it designated as the .45 2 7/8th or the .45 2.8, they are all the same cartridge; the 2.8 and 2 7/8th is just the case length. Most of these cartridges are straight walled (SS), but there are a few bottle neck (BN) variants out there, such as the .44-77.

Obviously we have only touched on this subject, if you need more information please get in touch with us.