Still in The Field: The Winchester Model 70

The year is 1936, and one of the finest, purpose-built, bolt action hunting rifles ever made has just appeared on gunstore shelves. Until then, hunters were carrying a mix of lever-action rifles, sporterized surplus rifles, and some of the earliest commercial bolt actions. The Winchester Model 70 was about to change all of that.

Ninety years later, the Model 70 still occupies space in the frontal lobe of many big game hunters’ minds. Those who have Model 70s cherish them. Those who don’t, want one. Even at a time when cutting edge tech and “long range” rifles seem to dominate the hunting world, the Model 70 is still what many think of when they think of a big game rifle.

The Model 70 didn’t get there by accident. In the early days, it was a handmade rifle for the mass market. It came out at a perfect time, when skilled labor was cheap and quality trumped quantity. Winchester listened to hunters and shooters who wanted an accurate, well-built gun with a crisp trigger, fully capable out of the box. It has won medals at shooting competitions, has served on the front lines of the Vietnam war, and remains a fixture at hunting camps around the country. Here’s why the Winchester Model 70 is still in the field.

The pre-64 Model 70 is most recognizable by the large external extractor on the controlled round feed action.

One could argue that one person really gave the Model 70 staying power: Jack O’Connor. But there’s a lot more to the rifle than the man who made it famous. We’ll get back to Jack below, but first we need to talk about the Winchester Model 54.

In the 1920s there was an arms race between American rifle companies and an absolute flood of military surplus bolt-action rifles. After the first World War, a cottage industry of craftsmen sprung up to convert or “sporterize” cheap surplus bolt-actions into proper hunting rifles. They’d take off the bulky military stocks, rebarrel them, and perform other fit-and-finish wonders to give hunters light, trim, affordable rifles. Better yet, the guns out-performed most commercial lever-action hunting rifles because they fired bigger, more powerful cartridges.

Big American gun companies had to adapt or get left in the dust. Soon Savage, Remington, and Winchester were producing bolt-action hunting rifles based on the tooling they used to make military rifles during the war. To get ahead of the competition, Winchester worked for three years to develop the Model 54 and the .270 Winchester cartridge. A lot of the rifle was based on military actions, but it was a tried and true hunting rifle that improved upon what both the sporterizers and other gun companies could do. Financial trouble hit Winchester and the whole country in 1929, leading the Olin family to buy the company. Under new ownership, they went back to the blueprints for the Model 54 to design something even better.

An example of some cost cutting between early and post 64 model 70s. The pre 64 Model 70 (left) has a checkered metal butt plate. The post 64 (right) has a molded plastic butt plate. Both are high quality by today’s standards.

Bolt action shooters wanted one thing out of their hunting rifles, and that was accuracy. To improve upon the Model 54, Winchester started by tricking out the trigger. They took the concept of their Model 52 rimfire trigger and adapted it to the larger centerfire rifle. The result was a crisp, light trigger that was also adjustable for weight and overtravel. Winchester also improved upon the action screw, moving the front action screw behind the recoil lug to distribute stress during recoil more evenly. This helped the rifle stay accurate after being fired over and over again.

By this time, shooters were also starting to use rifle scopes and Winchester took notice. They profiled the bolt handle and safety on the Model 70 to be more scope friendly. This would give buyers a rifle that was target-level accurate, optics-ready, and thoroughly modern right out of the box.

Left you can see the controlled round feed bolt from a pre-64 Model 70. Right there is the push-feed bolt of the post-64.

The attributes described above might sound boring to us today because most of our hunting rifles have those features. But the Model 70 set the pace that all bolt-action hunting rifles were to follow for the next 90 years. At the time, features found on the Model 70 could be found on high-end sporters coming out of the UK and from premier custom shops in the US. But the Model 70 gave every American hunter access to performance.

At the same time, the Model 70 had a champion and unofficial PR agent named Jack O’Connor. O’Connor, writing for Outdoor Life, was probably the most famous gunwriter and big game hunter of the late 1930s into the 1970s. He took his famous Al Biesen stocked Model 70 all over the world, and every month, American hunters got to read about their exploits.

O’Connor wasn’t the only one pushing the Model 70. By the 1960s, the Model 70 had worked its way onto military shooting teams and later into the hands of USMC snipers in Vietnam. One of those snipers, Carlos Hathcock, pushed the rifle to further fame, when several books came out about him and his fellow scout snipers. The scout snipers’ Model 70s, glass bedded and topped with Unertl scopes, became the most bad ass precision rifles of their day.

In the minds of shooters, this all added up to proof that the Model 70 was one of the finest, most capable bolt actions ever made. To back that up, the Model 70 did perform. It was accurate, built to an heirloom quality, and reliable with a rugged Mauser-style action. Winchester went on to chamber the Model 70 in dozens of cartridges from the .22 Hornet to the .458 Winchester Magnum. Everything was going great, but it would all change in 1964.

This 30/06 pre-64 is in fantastic original condition. It’s topped off with a classic Leupold 2.5-8X scope, making it just about the perfect deer rifle for eastern hardwoods.

The Model 70 is still in production today, and it closely resembles its original 1930s design. Before we can get to that happy part of the story, though, we need to talk about 1964—the year time stopped for Model 70 evangelists.

In 1964, higher labor costs and market pressure pushed Winchester to redesign the Model 70. To many, this was apocalyptic. The biggest change was a push-feed action vs the controlled round feed action of before. This saved the manufacturer extra steps in machining to fit the bolt face to the barrel’s breech face. Winchester also went from machining receivers from solid bar stock to machining them from a forging. But these cost-saving changes didn’t matter as much to the broader public as many think. Winchester ended up selling more post-’64 Model 70s than they did the original pre-’64s.

In 2013, the company decided to take the best of both designs and combine them into the Model 70 we have today. Modern Model 70s are made mostly overseas with more precise manufacturing processes than the pre- or post-64 models. This gives the rifle tighter tolerances and a higher level of precision. Modern CNC machining also let Winchester return to the beloved controlled-round-feed action. There are also several modern upgrades that keep the gun relevant today.

Winchester profiled the bolt handle and safety to easily clear rifle scopes. This is a feature we take for granted today, but it was a nice option back in the 1930s.

The most glaring factor when shopping for a used Model 70 is the post ‘64 cutoff. But I wouldn’t get hung up on this. The biggest sticking points with pre- vs post-64 guns are the controlled round feed and quality of construction. Winchester Model 70 purists are going to probably hate this, but in this writer’s opinion, early post 64 guns are still solid hunting rifles. Their triggers are crisp, they’re nice to carry, and they are more accurate than most people can shoot.

The gun world is full of stuff like controlled round feed vs push feed, and usually these arguments are bogus. The controlled round feed is reliable and thought to be absolutely necessary for something like a dangerous game rifle. But tests have proven controlled-round-feed rifles are not infallible. Push feed rifles are also incredibly reliable and accurate because the bolt face supports the cartridge better than a controlled round feed bolt face. Take, for example, the Remington 700. It’s a push-feed, it’s super accurate, and it’s reliable enough for the military.

If you need a controlled-round-feed rifle to sleep at night in your tent on a cape buffalo hunt, I say you should settle for no other rifle. For the average American big game hunter, though, controlled round feed doesn’t give you an advantage. Controlled round feed rifles do give you that sexy Mauser-action look, which I can understand has its own cool factor. You’re just going to pay more for it.

The value of a pre-64 Model 70 lies within the fact that it is a finely-tuned, handmade machine. It’s the sort of thing that carries well-deserved gravitas. They were built at a time when you could give a human being a bar of solid steel, a Bridgeport mill, and a handful of files, and end up with a beautiful rifle. These guns were not made by CNC machines, AI, or corporate bean counters. They were hand fitted by craftsmen who conjured rifle accuracy through black magic and feel. Collectors love them just as they love vintage Rolexes, Randall Knives, and air-cooled Porsches. Like all of those things, pre-64 Model 70s are expensive, especially if they’re chambered for more off-beat cartridges like .250-3000 Savage.

If you own a post-64 be proud of it. Compared to the tupperware rifles of today, a blued-steel and walnut post-64 Model 70 is of better quality than the purists bemoaned years ago. And if you’re looking for a solid deer rifle at a reasonable price, a post-64 Model 70 chambered in .308 could be your gun. Those who put a premium on high-craft should track down a high-condition pre-64 and expect to pay between $2,000 and $5,000 for standard chamberings and up to five figures for more exotic stuff. If you want high-performance, and perhaps the best of both worlds, buy a brand new Model 70 from Winchester. The best thing about Model 70s is that they all put meat on the table because they’ve all been doing it for years.