Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Winchester Model 770

I found a Winchester Model 770 at a decent price, and I'm taking it home tonight after work. After some work, it will probably end up as a hunting rifle for one of my sons.

I know what a 70 is. I know what a 670 is. However, I had never seen a 770 before. How does a 770 relate to the others in the Model 70 line?

Shaman,

The 770 is about the same as a 70A. An economy version of the Post '64 push feed M-70. No hinged floorplate or fore-end tip. Might have had a hardwood stock, (i.e: not walnut) Made from '69-'71. (The M-670 was made from '67-'73) The M-70A was manufactrued from '72-'78. Hope this helps....

Grasshopper

My hunch is it is like a M70A which is to Win. what a M700 ADL is to Remington. A regular action without the hinged floor plate in the bottom of magazine.

Thanks Grasshopper. That's just what I'm looking for. This one looked just like the 670, except the finish was darker and the front sight was hooded.

Grasshopper is mostly correct. My brother has a 770 in 308 which was his first deer rifle. For all intents and purposes it is a 70 with no floorplate just as grasshopper says. My brother's rifle does have a low grade walnut stock. It was really warp prone and took a lot of acraglass in the fore end to cure it. It would not surprise me to find out there were/are 770's out there with hardwood stocks. Seems like I remember 670's with both. If I remember the 670 correctly, it had a sliding safety more like what was on the Mark X Interarms and not the traditional winchester three position. My brother's is a very accurate shooter.

Steve

I've found that when in doubt, it's best to go to the source. So I looked up my file of old Winchester Catalogs. My 1969 shows the Model 770 with walnut stock and 3-position safety.

The M-670 is shown with two position safety a.l.a. Mauser Mk-X. Also it states that it has a "Walnut finished" American hardwood stock.

By '71 the M-670 is down to two calibers: .243 and .30-06.

I don't have a '72 catalog. My '73 shows the M670 with a 3-position safety and the M-70-A replacing the M-770

Evidently about '72 or '73, they kind of morphed the M-770 and M-670, and dropped the two position safety.

My '75 catalog shows the M-670 equipped with a 4x Weaver scope. The Blue Book of Gun Values states that the M670 was discontinued after '73, but yet my '75 catalogs shows it still.

And that, my friends is the extent of my knowledge on the economy grade M-70's. And now you likely know more than you wanted to know.

Grasshopper

This one seems to have a 3 position safety and a walnut-colored hardwood stock.

It is in overall better shape than the 670 I rescued back in 87. That one had to have a complete refinish on the stock. The 670 had been traded between 3 brothers as their primary deer weapon, and it had been knocked around quite a bit. The 770 on the other hand is a 1-owner gleaned from an estate, and it looks like it spent the last 30 years in the back of the closet.

The Model 770 is a rare Winchester as far as the number of rifles manufactured. I think, if I remember correctly, that they were also sold for export. You don't see them very often and if it were me, I would keep it. Thanks...Bill.

I drug my feet & passed on a 770 in 300 min mag about 5 years ago. It too was a walnut stock, 3 position safety, blind mag, pressed checkering... factory iron sights and drilled/tapped for scope mounts... it was cheap & I regret not buying it.

Whodathunk, a collectors item?

That's good to know. I'll keep it in original condition, and if the kid wants to do any customization, I'll get a new tupperware stock for it and store the old one.

Update:

Christmas morning, I went over to their Mom's house and picked up my older 2 sons. Grandma and Grandpa came over and we spent the latter half of the morning dishing out presents to each other. Moose gave me a stool he made in Woodshop. I gave Moose a couple of Bob Marley posters, a warm vest and a couple pair of jeans.

After everyone had settled in to await the trek over to Grandma's house for dinner, I told Moose I had something for him. We went downstairs. I handed him an orange ammo case, he opened it up. It was some 30-06. Big deal! Oh, but this was different. This ammo case still has the $1.95 sticker on it from Sport Headquarters. It burned down back in '88. Still not significant?
This was the ammo box that accompanied Dad on his first boar hunt. Actually I also sneaked a yellow one into my other vest pocket as I was going out the door of the lodge-- the guide had gotten me so worked up over breakfast I wanted extra rounds for insurance. When I got back to the lodge that night, I found I'd been carrying 44 rounds of 30-06 180 grained roundnose. I guess I was determined not to run out.

Still not a big deal, huh?

But No! It was a big deal. I tried to explain that these were not loaded for the Garand he'd been borrowing for the past few years. Mai Non! They were also 150 grainers instead of 165 grain. That would reduce the felt recoil a bit in something other than a gas-operated semi. These were loaded with the bullet several thousandths further out. Granted you had to have a caliper to see the difference, but the difference was significant. Why? Allow me to demonstrate. They're built to fit a few thousandths off the lands of. . . I pulled out the rifle case. . .

This: a very minty Winchester 770 in 30-06.

There was no sense taking pictures. All you would have seen was a kid in a basement, walleyed with amazement. You can imagine that well enough. I promise that I'll take pictures as soon as we can get back down to the farm and I can take kid, rifle, ammo, and shooting bench and put them all together.

From the back of an old man's closet to the grip of a young man's hands, the road goes on forever and the party never ends.

Great story. I especially like the last line...it took me back to when I was 11 and Dad gave me my first deer rifle at Christmas. Thanks for the memory.

IIRC, the Winchester 777 was an export style and the 770 was sort of an intermediate grade between the 670 and 70.

Jeff

Of course I'm only 17 years late to comment on this thread.
I picked up a scoped 770 in 243 on the cheap and was going to rebarrel it to 338 Federal, but after seeing just how rare these are, I'm also going to keep it original and find another donor.

I've owned a few 670's but have never seen a 770

Shaman, your update story from 2007 made this thread worth resurrecting! That 770 will probably someday be a memory for another generation, or two.

777’s were made by Nikko in Japan and never imported to the US. The majority of US specimens came home with military folks who served in Europe or Asia.

260 is right about the 770 being an intermediate grade rifle. Nobody would ever mistake a 777 for a 770. 777’s were Weatherby/Kleingunther/Nikko Golden Eagle-esque.

pretty sure 777 is the same as a Nikko Golden Eagle

My 670 30/06 will out shoot most hunting guns in my cabinet. Cheap thing.

That's how I remember it as well. Dad had a 777 in 7Rem Mag back in the late-80's/early-90's sometime. Somewhere there's a few film pics of it and I could confirm the 777/Golden Eagle twinsies, but I'm probably not going to go dig them up.