Developed to answer consumer demand, and designed to offer the shooter the best of both worlds, the lever guns tubular magazine can be loaded either from the front, in typical Henry fashion, or at the receiver via a gate on the right side.

This marks a major evolution for the company; since resurrecting the Henry name back in 1997, this is the first lever-action produced by the manufacturer that offers a traditional side-loading gate.

The new Side Gates are being offered in.30-30 Win.,.35 Rem.,.38-55 Win.

Single Action Shooting Society competitions) and.45-70 Govt.

Our test sample for the following review was chambered in the very popular.30-30 Win.

A closer look at the brass parts revealed them to be expertly polished without scratches or casting marks.

In addition to the receiver, Henry also makes the barrel band and buttplate from brass, and they provide a pleasing contrast to the high-polish blued parts, including the guns bolt, lever and barrel.

Henry takes great pride in building its guns exclusively from American-made parts and components.

Both the buttstock and fore-end were tightly grained, and Henry laser-cut them with checkering.

The wrist of the buttstock and fore-end possesses a delicate floral scroll inside the checkering pattern that is both beautiful and functional.

Cartridges can then be loaded into the tube, and the operation is completed by pushing the inner magazine tube back down into position and turning it to lock it in place.

To top-off or load the gun using the side gate, simply push the cartridges into the port as you would any other lever gun.

Henry 45-70 Problems Free Of The

Unlike most side-gate lever-actions, unloading the gun is quick and easy, as the shooter can simply remove the internal magazine tube and allow the cartridges to slide free of the rifle without the need to cycle each cartridge through the action.

The Side Gate can be loaded via a cutout in the magazine tube or, for the first time on a Henry, through a side-loading gate on the receivers right.

The brass-frame gun has blued steel for its lever, bolt, barrel, magazine tube, hammer and trigger.

If, during the course of firing the user wishes to stop shooting, he or she simply needs to use a thumb to carefully ease the hammer forward while pulling the rifles trigger.

The rifles semi-buckhorn rear sight is adjustable for both windage and elevation, and the ramped front sight is equipped with a 0.062 ivory bead.

Another selling point of the rifles flat-top design is that its receiver top is drilled and tapped for scope use.

We used medium-height scope rings to attach a Leupold VX-2, 2-7X 28 mm Ultralight scope, but once we had the scope mounted, we discovered its ocular bell was resting on the rear sight blade, even after we removed its elevator.

Fortunately, it was an easy matter to remove the rear sights screw and drive it from its dovetail.

Taller rings would have been another solution if wed had a set handy.

Henry 45-70 Problems Portable Shooting Bench

We fired all groups from a seated position using a DOA Tactical portable shooting bench and a Caldwell rifle rest with our targets set out at 100 yds.

Our evaluators were careful to rest the fore-end of the rifle, and not the magazine tube, on the rest while shooting so as not to cause a change in point of impact on the targets.

Silvertips. This load also averaged about 1.5 groups for the five groups we fired with it.

Overall, the gun exhibited fine accuracy with the average extreme spread for the three loads tested coming in at 1.83.

As one shooter noted, the frame and side gate itself are nicely polished with the sharp edges removed for pain-free loading.