A Gun a Week: Marlin 336CS, 30-30 Winchester

Marlin 336CS in 30-30 Winchester.

It wasn't too long after I bought that  Winchester Model 120 12 gauge in 1984 before I realized I needed a rifle. Well, need, you know, is one of those words. I guess I'd been hunting dirt clods and dove all summer and fall before I realized the colder it got that I needed a proper deer rifle. And again, since I was a farm hand, there was only one place to go: Best Products on High Point Rd. in Greensboro, NC. And by proper deer gun I mean Lever Gun, and once again there were only two choices for me: Marlin or Winchester.

Sure, there were other lever guns around at the time, but who had the time or the money to go hunting down a Browning BLR or an ugly-ass Savage 99? Not me--farm hand remember? As luck would have it, I'd already been able to fondle my dad's Marlin 39A in .22 LR so I reckon the choice was pretty simple after all. I mean who wouldn't buy for his first rifle a gun that came from the factory stamped with his father's initials? I bet I was 16 years old before I found out that all Marlins were stamped "JM" on the barrel and not just John Mothershead's.

The JM stamp on Daddy's Marlin 39A I first held when I was in the third
grade or so. It's mine now too since Dad is gone. The design is even older,
virtually unchanged since 1891! 

Turns out I made a wise choice. Back in those days, Winchester 1894s had only recently started making their lever guns eject shells out to the side of the receiver making center-mounted scopes an easy possibility. Before then, gunowners were out of luck or mounted scopes off kilter to the left side of the receiver, and that would be a tad awkward. Marlin, on the other hand had been producing solid-top receivers pretty much since 1889 on their Model, um, 1889. Solid top receivers make the Marlin safer and stronger. 

Just wait until I get to the powerhouse cartridges this little 100-plus year old design can handle!

I don't remember how much it cost, but I do remember living in a 30 foot camper-trailer on the farm for free and thus could afford it. Sure, I couldn't afford heat or hot water, but I got me a rifle, and a little later on, got me a little truck too. What else could a guy need to go deer hunting.

Oh yeah, time and money. Neither of which I had for a very long time.

Mainly I worked, and moved, and worked. There was a period where I did get to hunt alot* near Raleigh on the land that was going to become Falls Lake. I had moved to Garner to work for my first brother-in-law in his tree service after he took a fall. The lake was just wide open woods back then and it was open for the hunting! Though looking back, my first brother-in-law's hunting style might have hampered us a bit.

He called it "still hunting", but we weren't ever still at all. I call it walking around with a gun. In fact, the only time we ever saw deer in those days they were running and high-tailing it away from us. To this day, like I did back then, I have a natural aversion to shooting at running deer unless it's absolutely necessary. I've only done it twice in 48 years, but more on that later. Anyway, after a few months in Garner, I moved back to the Greensboro area, then High Point to start a lifetime of banging nails.

So I had the rifle and barely an inkling of where and how to hunt, and then got deeper into the trap of work and then suddenly college and then work yet again. The Marlin and Winchester became dusty props in my closet back "home". That's how alot* of people's guns spend their time, but all that changed for me finally.

By the time I was a seasoned hunter, and by that, I mean I had killed one buck with a muzzleloader, I was getting to understand that "stand hunting" (which is more like sitting down and waiting quietly and hardly any standing at all) is the way to go. And 21 years after I'd bought it, I shot a doe in the classic broadside presentation with that Marlin 336CS on Federal Gamelands in Vance County, North Carolina! Sadly, for me, this was in the days before every cell phone had a camera installed, so there are no pictures from that day, just the memory of the doe walking down the trail, eyeing me under my home-made, camouflaged poncho, disregarding me and then presenting me with that classic pose.

She darted off and I thought I had missed, but I hadn't. I found her ten yards off the trail. The 30-30 cartridge, developed by Winchester in 1895, the first U.S. small-bore smokeless powder cartridge, had done its job and she was mine...21 years after I'd bought it...did I mention that?

The big screw is where the safety button used to be. The wood isn't original either...suffice it to
say that Rooster Cogburn's classic move is harder to do than it looks and might make
for a cracked butt stock!

The rifle was manufactured in 1984 of course and sported the oft-lamented and hated cross-bolt safety that Marlin added to bolster the classic half-cock safety that lever guns have utilized since the early days of the Henry rifles. I never really cared about the safety one way or the other, but when I got the chance, I bought a filler bolt that allowed the removal of the new-fangled safety making the rifle's lines smoother. I've had other Marlins with that safety, but never bothered to rid them of the ugly button. I'm just not as nerdy nor die-hard as other Marlin owners anymore.

Here's a sister Marlin 336CS with the cross-bolt safety. I won't mess with it now. It is what it is.

I've set the rifle with a few different types of optics from time to time--when you can't afford new guns, one way to "cope" is to tweak the ones you already own. Early on I shot it with the factory, semi-buckhorn sights. I've scoped it with the trendy (at the time) and silly "Kwik Site See Thru Mounts" that were supposed to let you use the factory iron sights or the scope above if one or the other failed. The arrangement is silly because if you use the scope, you have no cheek weld to the stock, and if you use the iron sights, you run a real risk of donking your forehead with a scope.

A photo of us in 1995 or so. The rifle sports the out of fashion "See-Thru" sights and I out of fashion spectacles.
There too is the original wood stock before my "rifleman" move.

I eschewed all optics once and used a Weaver "peep sight" on the rear of the receiver though very quickly realized that when deer are most active--predawn and after sunset--the sight is almost worthless. I quickly forgot that set up after a few failed outings. Failed because, if I had seen a deer in the dim light, I wouldn't have been able to shoot it with confidence. Peep sights are a midday affair best for plinking and target shooting in my opinion.

For now, I've settled on the also trendy "scout mount" set up. That's an extended eye relief scope mounted further down the rifle body to make quick shots easier, or so the theory goes. And it works; that's the set up I used to shoot that doe, but it too is kind of silly. Lever guns scream for small, lower power scopes which also lend themselves to quick snap shots, though again, I hardly ever have to do that. Some day I'll tinker with it probably and find myself sticking a regular ol' 2-7 power variable scope on regular ol' Weaver mounts that set the scope as low as I can get it. It works, boringly so though.

XS Lever Scout mount. Another fad I fell into. It works though!

I think about how little I knew about rifles and ballistics and hunting and life when I bought the rifle. The Marlin and that Model 120 Winchester 12 gauge had me set to hunt anything in NC. From these two I began a pursuit of hunting, but also other shooting sports including reloading which is the home-making of ammunition! Had it not been for these two, I might've just been one of those people who say, "Oh yeah, I'd love to go shooting, or hunting," but then never do. Or worse, in my mind, I might've been one of those guys that buy a fine rifle and then let it end up as a rusty doorstop before it ever gets used for the purpose it was intended for. 

The scout scope set up allows for easy photo ops and plenty of eye-relief.
Don't worry! No Fluffy Kibs were harmed this morning!

I had to work long and hard for the money to buy this rifle and that's one reason I'll never ever get rid of it. So many friends do not have their first rifle for one reason or another, but I have mine. Sure, it has new wood since my Rooster Cogburn fiasco where I tried to spin it over a thinly-carpeted concrete floor in my first apartment and cracked the original wood, but it's still in my safe.