Home Forums Lever Action Central Lever Actions - General Winchester 94AE in 307 Winchester

Good deal for me, almost new 307 Winchester AE (got that ugly cross safety) but other than that its pretty sweet. Most of the guns in the collection are pretty long range but.......does anyone reload for this round? How about smoothing up the trigger pull, it is pretty grainy. Regardless thinking this will be a very nice walking gun.

Guys who have them say you can use 308 brass. I don't know. Always wanted one never had one. I had the 356 and 375

I use 307 ww brass in mine. Factory 180 gr fn are stout on the recoil. Mine is an early one with the biradial drilled scope base holes. Midwest gun works for scope bases.l pulled the shortened sling swivel thru the forend out, need to plug and patch the hole the previous owner bubba'ed in there. I put a m8 4x on it. I want to be able to cover deer out to 250 yds with it. Haven't tried 308 brass in it..mb

I have a new one in the box still. Form cases from 444 Marlin brass for the 307 and 356 WIN. I peeped my 356 up for short range in the thick stuff.

I shoot all three. I prefer the .307 as I believe it has the best balance between velocity and bullet construction.
I prefer the 170 grain bullets. The 130 grain Speer was a big surprise for me me. It puts our smaller deer down quickly.

For a baseline load that all others must meet or exceed try: 40.0 grains of IMR 4064 and the Speer 170 grain Hot Core bullet. This is a great deer load at the modest velocity of about 2,350 fps.

If you use the 308 Winchester brass you have a Two-Shooter. More than one round in the magazine will provide enough spring compression to cause the first round in-line to jump the cartridge stop and pass under the lifter. If this happens don't waste time fishing the cartridge forward with a knife in screw driver. Simply pull the magazine end plug and dump the spring, follower plug and remains cartridges out the end of the magazine tube.
.444 Marlin brass works well in my rifle.

You can smooth the trigger pull but it is difficult to impossible to lighten it very much. Get a good look at the rebounding hammer mechanism. The yoke or finger rock back and forth and you cannot shorten them much and retain the rebounding hammer.
Shortening the spring will leave you with light primer strikes.

This is a good rifle cartridge combination. You can shoot it a very long time and not try all of the bullet/powder combinations.

If you like 150 grain bullets the Speer, Winchester Ballistic Silvertip and the Nosler E-Tip atr three good ones.the plastic ball in the Winchester will open it up quickly but the bullet retains weight well,

I have one and really enjoy carrying it as well as shooting. Mr. Iorg is the go to source of information, he has helped a lot. Blue Collar Reloading has .307 Hornady Brass in stock.

i have not posted much in the last few years. We are still shooting quite a bit and trying new stuff but other things are
stretching my time.
My father once pointed out we had shot far more $ in bullets and powder than we paid for our rifles. If he saw the
price of primers today he would sure have a few comments.

I still have the 4x Burris Short Mag scope on mine. I sure miss my old Weaver V4. They bring a good price these days.

Find an O-ring for your safety button and don think about it again.

This is a picture of a cat named Sherbie who has adopted a Whitetail Doe as Mom. She licks his head and sides and he
sniffs her head as she eats.
Sherbie reluctantly shares his crunchy kitty with this young Axis Hind who has also adopted the Doe as Mom.
Sherbie & Hind

.308 brass doesn’t have the rim that .307 does so I am unsure that it’ll work. It also is of different thickness so capacity is different, i.e. published powder charges are different. I believe only the outside case dimensions (aside from the rim) are the same.

I like mine and the 160 flex tip but admittedly it has been neglected in the safe for several years now. I need to change that.



I don't have any .308 brass laying around or else I'd make a dummy round real quick and see if it'd chamber.

Guys swear the 308 brass works. They say the extractor grabs the case and pulls it out

IIRC (!) the Marlins in .356 and .307 supposedly work with .308 and .358 brass. Shouldn’t be too difficult to make some dummies and try it out in a Winchester.

You can fire and extract the .308 cases with no problem. The extractor will only hold about 50% of the cases long enough to be ejected
The cases are dropped onto the lifter.
The Marlin 308 MX will feed the rimless cases from the magazine and extract them and eject them with general satisfaction. Occasionally one will get past the cartridge stop and tie up the action.

When the rifle and cartridges first appeared the ammunition was very difficult to get. We shot and hunted single shot with .308 Winchester power point ammunition.

Not all .308 Winchester extractor grooves are the same dimension.

I trimmed some cases to the same length and this is how I measured them.

The empty W-W Super .307 Win. case weighed 186.3 grains and filled with water weighed 239.3 grains. For a rough 53.0 grains of water.
The R-P .444 Marlin formed case weighed 190.2 grains empty and 243.4 grains filled with waterfor a rough 54.5 grains of water capacity
The R-P .308 Win. case weighed 170.3 grains empty and 225.5 grains full of water. A rough 55.2 grain water capacity

Ken Waters measured water capacity of the .307 Winchester as 45.5 grain. The 308 Winchester as 47.0 grains of water.

Ken may have been using new unfired cases. Mine were fired and full length resized.

Loading the three different cases with 150-grain Remington bulk Round nose bullets seated to a COL of 2.550” with 42.5 grains of IMR 4064, Win LR primer and using a Lee Factory crimp the loads chronographed.
W-W Super 307 2,512 fps.
R-P 444 Marlin 2,494 fps.
R-P 308 Win 2,389 fps.

Get the correct brass. If you can find them, Speer made a 130 grain FP. Gives a bit more reach

I have some 130 grn fn's also some Speer 150 gr mag tips..mb

Speer still makes a run of the 130FP once in a while. BCR and Graf have them fairly frequently.

Midway had them on sale cheap a few weeks ago... but I bought the last of them 🤷‍♂️😂 I shoot them in my 303 Savage for plinkers.

The 130 grain Speer bullet puts our smaller West Texas deer down quickly.
I started shooting these after reading the article: One Mans Opinion by Ralph T. Walker. This was in Guns WORLD magazine.
We discussed this quite a bit on the old Beartooth zbullets shooters forum. A number of hunters from the North West and South East were already using the 130 grain bullets and reported enthusiasticly on their performance.

For 130 grain starting loads
46.0 grains of Hodgdon Varget
44..5 grains of IMR 4064
39.0 grains of Alliant Reloder 15
Will all exceed 2,600 fps.
THE LOAD in our two rifles is 44.5 grains of IMR 4064. This is one of those loads that crosses rifles and gives you the confidence to sit down at the bench and say: Watch This.
At 2,625 fps this load works well on our deer.

My goal with the 130 grain bullets in the .30-30AI was 2,700 fps.
In the .307 Winchester 46.0 grains of Alliant Reloder 15 is as good as any powder and pushes the 130 grain Speer at 2,780 fps. This is a good deer load but not the bragging accuracy load at the bench.

I thought I would mention some small things about shooting the rifle from the bench.
The recoil is not unpleasant but if you are shooting quite a bit from the bench a PAST pad or padded coat does help.
I staple white paper to the target board and then a large flat black rectangle positioned so I can save a group if I want to.
I shoot for the corners of the rectangle and align the cross hairs with the sides. Using low power scopes and thicker cross hairs you can do good work.
Make some one inch black squares to fresh the corners.
Canting is difficult to control and aligning the cross hairs with the side and bottom or top helps prevent this.
Handling recoil as near the same for each shot as possible is extremely difficult with lever actions.
If you have unexplainable fliers, your handling of recoil could be part of the problem.
A quick and easy way to reduce felt recoil at the bench and to help handling recoil the same for each shot is a wedge under the recoil pad. Brownells sell the wedges or they are easy to cut from balsa wood blocks. If you shoot offhand when hunting, pull the wedges as it will slow bringing the rifle to your shoulder for a snap shot.
Fun stuff, these leverguns.

Pachmayr makes a really thin decelerator that has worked great for me on levers. It gets rid of hard plate bite without messing up the LOP.

https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1115351322?pid=668975

So you bought it?

Absolutely, there ended up being some bartering, I ended up trading a Winchester XPR in 243 with 2 boxes of ammo for the 94AE and 4 boxes of ammo, 2 x winchester 180s and 2 x Hornady Leverevolution. I like it so far other than the crappy trigger.

I added a Leupold VXII in 3 x 9 x 40 I had laying around, some sling swivels and the ammo buttstock cheek riser. It does real well with the scope. Played with some bullets and was pretty impressed with the factory 180's and the Hornadys did well too. Ordered a 3 die set from Lee with the crimp die a shell holder and some 170 grain Speer SPFNs I have 60 x loose brass (Winchester) Powders CFE 223, IMR 4064, RL-15 and W-760 for mid burners.

You posted the picture of you bullets somewhere else but I cannot find it now. What were they shot into?

On the Beartooth forum search for seattleroadwr and .30 lever maximum.
This wildcat overcame the sticky extraction issues in the Marlin 336. Gunsmith Nonneman made the rifle.
With the FTX bullet seattleroadwr saw similar results to mine on deer.

The FTX bullet designed for the .308ME worked fine. We both saw hair blown off around the entrance wound. The FTX bullets tends to wad up but still penetrates well. Not much to criticize except that it required a modified magazine follower for smooth feeding of the last round in the magazine.

I posted a picture of at least one entrance wound on Beartooth and on the campfire. Apparently we were the only two hunters who noticed this.

I look forward to reading about your shooting results.

Lever, especially the Winchesters, suffer from gritty trigger pull. A bit of polishing by a gunsmith will go a long way.

The bullets were shot into wet newspaper @ 90 yards not perfect but the testing is equal.

IMR 4064 and Varget is what I have been using under a 160gr FTX bullet, this has produced very well for me in my rifle.
Shot a couple great bucks and a Moose with mine.

I had a .307 & a Marlin .356. The Winchester was plenty accurate. I used .308 for the round in the chamber & .307 ammo for the magazine. (all handloads) Pretty darn accurate. I gor into a business deal that sucked up a lot of cash & sold them both. I killed a number of deer with the .307. It performed great. The .Winchester had a stiff action & were pretty accurate.

Looking for 356 200 grain bullets if anyone is aware of anything. Gunbrokers prices make me shoot less
Thanks

Here is a heavy weight bullet. Because it’s gas checked you can eek out a bit more velocity than a jacketed.

358 gas check hard cast

Not many tube feed projectiles to choose from for a 356 Win. The 230 gr will sure knock the hell out of whatever you unleash it on.

If Speer still makes the 220's they are great in the 356

I have enjoyed using the 160 grain Hornaday FTX .308 mx bullet in the 300 savage…..,so much….

I bought 2 308 mx rifles!

New Win 307 brass in the classifieds if anyone would be interested.

I don't want to change the direction of this thread but....
The 200 grain RCBS gas check bullet is the cheapest way to get into a cast bullet that works well in the Winchester rifles.
Next is the NOE 225 grain.
Ranch Dog also had a 200 grain bullet which worked well. This one may be available from NOE.
Rcbs 200gR.

I'm pretty sure I still have 3x boxes of factory Winchester .307 ammo somewhere...

Reloading time, CCI 200 score, 100 rounds of Hornady brass, and Speer 170 grain FN bullets....and some reloader 15 for now (also have 4064, Varget, and CFE 223) one of those should work.

I always crimp for this rifle.

I just cannot add a picture to a thread from the picture hosting page. I'll work on it.
Here is a picture from Imgur using Winchester brass. I'll draw it up using Hornady Brass.

Using Winchester brass with the Speer 170 grain bullet seated .485" in the case you have a
COL of 2.55" (.535"outsde the case).
This leaves you room for 40.1 grains of IMR 4064 - Uncompressed. It can be a challenge to
get the 42.0 grain maximum load into the case,seat the bullet and get it crimped. You can do it.
The Lee hand press helps as you can turn the cartridge upside down as you seat the bullet.
Anyway, you have a good selection of powders and should have no trouble getting a good hunting load.

William have you ever used any of the Speer Mag Tips in the 307?..mb

My father and I tried them. About 2009 I think. I didn't look at the date.
https://www.shootersforum.com/threads/tubular-magazine-detonations.33393/#post-233011

We tried the 180 grain which was a mistake. We should have tried the 150 grain.
The problem with both bullets is they taper rapidly above the crimp groove. This gave us problems crimping.
It was not a big test as there were bullets better suited to the case then and today we have even better options.

I seem to remember that WyoHunter or ColoHunter looked into the Mag Tips more than we did. I was not able to locate their threads on this.

Here is the 2.005" Hornady case for comparison. 

Shot this old girl with mine yesterday.

Done the dead with less than 6x

And a plain Plex reticle...and antiquated lead core flat point bullets...