Jim Taylor
Fun with the 32-20
Wednesday, February 12, 2020, 06:46

Years ago I picked up a brand new Marlin 1894CL in 32-20. I am not sure why. I always liked the old cartridges. Anyway, it turned out to be a fun gun and I carried in on my horse quite a bit .. shot coyotes, javelina, armadillos, cats and dogs with it. One of my hunting loads was the 121 gr. AK47 bullet at about 2100 fps. It was too long to feed from the magazine so that was in the chamber for the first shot. I rarely needed a backup.

Then Cowboy Action came along. I soon found the short magazine a BIG hindrance so I had it modified a bit.

I removed the crossbolt safety, added a full length magazine, took out the 2-piece firing pin and installed a one piece firing pin, lightened all the springs, polished it every place I could and turned it into a race gun. It was not safe for anything else, but it worked well as a companion for my old Colt .32-20 sixgun.

Sometimes I shot black powder only. On still days running 10 rounds of black powder loads, the targets were not visible by the 6th or 7th shot!

Those were fun times.

During the years I had the gun I worked up quite a few loads. Here are a sample of them:

THESE WERE FINE IN MY GUN. YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY. BE SAFE!