Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Winchester Collectors History of the push feed model 70 ?

We've discussed this before and you either don't want to accept logic or you have short-term memory problems. Winchester announced the return of the Model 70 Featherweight at the 1981 SHOT Show and began releasing rifles for review for all of the major gun rags in January 1981 with the rifles showing up in distributor inventories within just a few weeks of all of this. Logic would dictate that Winchester was actively making these rifles in late 1980 to be ready for sale with their January 1981 announcement; they didn't wait until the SHOT announcement to start making receivers, barrels, and stocks and then furiously assemble them. And serial number databases aren't stone tablets.

I'll take my classic stainless with the CRF any day.....

If you are ever thinking about a ‘65 pf, run don’t walk from that one. Worst pos I ever bought in my life. Elmer Keith wrote in a G&A article that it was better than a pre-64. He sold out to the advertisers.

I do remember all the shot show 1981 stuff from previous discussions, but was curious on your take on sn that’s all. But i read that Winchester struck the sn were struck on the receivers and as you put it Winchester was hot and heavy building xtr featherweights in late 1980, but rifles didn’t hit the streets until 1981.. and logic ph uck I been in the army for over 21 yrs, I don’t have a clue what logic is anymore.

As slow as things move and what little I've been able to pick up from how products are rolled out, I would expect several rifles were making their way through the hands of various gun writers and testers throughout the latter part of 1980 in order for a full write-up to appear in a magazine in January and February of 1981. But for someone to claim their Featherweight XTR was from the late '70s or 1980 is just incorrect.

Thanks Mr. Treehorn! At least in 1981 Winchester got them
out quickly. Unlike now where it takes almost year and a half to see something from them after it’s announced at shot show..

79S,

Maybe some confusion in that I don't think the OP or others specified featherweight all the way throughout the discussion.

This was something I was unclear on before. I knew that there was advertising material floating around specifying a "new XTR" in 1978. Initially I thought these were the "new XTRs of which only a few made it to dealers before USRAC took over" (leosramblings).
I have come to understand the the XTR came out in '78 and the "featherweight xtr" in '81.
As a refinement of the line?

I have them all...A first year M54, a couple pre64 M70, a '67 PF, Classic 300 WM and a few FNs....the '67 is a heavy barrel 22-250 with an ugly stock, but I have managed to get 3/4 MOA 10 shot groups with 50 grainer Nosler BT. Not sure I really want to do anymore load development for accuracy with it right now. I don't have a complaint with any of them, but the pre64 M70 have a place in my heart....

Kansan

I have a 1964 30/06 and a 1965 225Win. Yeah, they are ugly with their pressed checkering and the gap between the barrel and the stock is big enough for a colony of bees. But they are both tack drivers, and for some inexplicable reason, I really like them both. (I actually sold my pre64 FWT '06 and kept the post-64, Blasphemy, I know.)