This continued with the Model 336 and its many variations. At the SHOT Show-it stands for Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade, the largest trade show in the firearms industry-in Las Vegas in January, 2005, I had the privilege of looking over a handsomely engraved rifle that was MarlinвЂ™s four millionth Model 336.ДЇrom the early days, the MarlinвЂ™s solid frame with ejection to the right side (instead of out the top of the mechanism, as with the Winchester) was one of its distinguishing features. The rest, as the saying goes, is history. Veteran hunter and gun dealer Jeff Boss demonstrates the excellent handling of the lever action Marlin carbine, unusually accurate for a rifle of this type. These attributes were carried into the newer gun, destined to be their longest-lived deer rifle: the Model 336, introduced in 1948 and still MarlinвЂ™s most popular hunting rifle.

Where Winchester emphasized a lean, mean straight-stock design with a slim, spare fore-end, the Marlin had a pistol grip style stock with its lever loop bent accordingly, and a fuller fore-end. Some 900,000 of these guns were made between then and 1935, when the company replaced it with their sleeker Model 36. Marlin introduced their Model 1893 rifle in the eponymous year, initially in old black powder calibers like the. 30-30 that sold over five million units since the year 1894, I knew that IвЂ™d have to follow up with an article on the other such deer rifle, MarlinвЂ™s Model 336. In the March/April 2005 issue of Backwoods Home Magazine, this space was devoted to the вЂњWinchester вЂ™94: the Classic Backwoods Home Deer Rifle.вЂќ And you know, even when I was writing that paean to the lever-action.

Marlin 336 rc serial number history