At The Range
After perusing the Henry Repeating Arms Co.'s catalog it is obvious that the company hopes to enter both the cowboy action shooting market and the short-range woods hunting arena with the Big Boy lever gun in .44 Magnum. Therefore in my test shooting I chose to use both full-house .44 Magnum factory loads with jacketed bullets and cowboy-type lead bullet factory loads. The high-velocity .44 Magnum loads that could be considered for deer hunting were test-fired at 100 yards in strings of five rounds. The low-velocity .44 Magnum and .44 Special lead-bullet "cowboy" loads were fired at only 25 yards but in strings of 10 rounds.
In addition to its distinctive brass frame, the Big Boy wears polished-brass buttplate and barrel band.
To be honest, in the beginning, I was not looking forward to doing much shooting with a .44 Magnum lever gun. About the worst I have ever had my right shoulder beat up during shooting came a few years back when testing several .44 Magnum carbines for an article. Fortunately, brass is heavy, which causes this particular .44 Magnum lever gun to weigh 8.68 pounds, about one to 11/2 pounds more than other comparable sized lever guns. And due to its relatively heavy weight, the Big Boy was pleasant enough to fire even with full-house .44 Magnum factory loads. With .44 Special low-velocity loads it was a plain pussycat.
Accuracy at 100 yards with the full-house .44 Magnum factory loads was very good, especially considering that the brass bead front sight subtends a full eight inches at that range. This sample Big Boy's trigger pull averaged six pounds but was without creep. At 100 yards, groups averaged in the three- to four-inch range, which is just what I have come to expect from other lever guns sporting similar sights and chambered for pistol-size cartridges. At the close range of 25 yards, the 10-shot groups ran more in the 1.5 range. That sounds fairly large, but those big .44-caliber bullets were usually cutting large, ragged holes.
Functioning was flawless with the loads listed in the accompanying chart. In the past I've encountered feeding problems with several .44 Magnum lever guns when they were loaded with shorter .44 Special cases, and in the beginning I wondered if the Henry .44 Magnum also would present problems in feeding the shorter .44 Special loads. This Big Boy did not seem to care. I tried to go a step further and feed it .44 Russian ammunition, but those very short cases would not function through it.
Let's discuss the intended purposes for the Big Boy as envisioned by the Henry Repeating Arms Co. In the catalog the company discusses this new lever gun as being for hunters and cowboy action shooters.
The .44 Henry Big Boy achieved very good accuracy with both cowboy-type ammo at 25 yards and with full-house Magnum hunting loads at 100 yards.
Some hunters will balk at that shiny brass receiver, saying it will scare game away. And perhaps that is so. But the original Henry repeater and its follow-up, the Winchester Model 1866, were brass framed (actually, in those days, bronze) and popular among hunters for decades. Time will tell on that one.
Mike found the 8.68-pound Henry Big Boy to be comfortable to shoot even with full-house .44 Magnum factory loads.
As for use by cowboy action shooters, the Single Action Shooting Society (probably better known as SASS) has approved the Big Boy for use in all SASS events. The Big Boy has sired a couple of variations that might interest lever-action fans. The lever-action design is particularly popular with cowboy action shooters, and Henry has designed a version of the Big Boy specifically for them in .45 Colt. The Big Boy's smooth operation should prove to be a benefit in those close competitive situations where performance counts. The most recent version of the Big Boy is chambered in .357 Magnum/.38 Special calibers. The .357 Magnum Big Boy would be ideal for close bush hunting.
The Henry Big Boy I tested was accurate, reliable, and smooth of operation.
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