The Story of the Henry Long Ranger Big Woods Carbine
The Story of the Henry Long Ranger Big Woods Carbine
By Mark Scheeren
When I went hunting with Hal Blood for the first time in the fall of 2006, I carried what I thought was supposed to be the best rifle for tracking North country big woods bucks - the Remington 7600 carbine with a red fiber optic front sight and a Williams peep sight with the aperture thrown out. And by all accounts, I was right, except for one thing; I couldn’t shoot that thing worth a damn. It just never fit right. A dozen missed bucks later, I traded it in, went back to my lever actions, and the rest as they say is history; a lot of big woods bucks have since hit the dirt.
I’ve always been interested in guns. My passion for steel and walnut goes back to my first time shooting when I was just a child, and has never stopped since. The experience of having the “wrong tracking rifle” created a serious drive to find the right one. In that pursuit I learned a lot about what makes a rifle a pleasure in the big woods and what doesn’t. I also learned that convincing a gun company to go out on a limb and build a rifle they had no real understanding of, was going to be a massive challenge.
The Quest
To a great extent, the outdoor industry has ignored the Northeast and Northern portion of the Upper Midwest for more than 40 years. So when I began asking gun companies to build a specific gun with the Northeast tracker and still-hunter in mind, they smiled, put up with my naive enthusiasm, and simply said, “That’s nice, but we’re good.” I spent more than eight years sending emails and letters to the various rifle manufacturers trying to make my case, and in return I was met with silence.
A Tracker’s Persistence
None of that rejection really bothered me though. Instead, I got to work building tracking rifles myself. I figured if the industry wasn’t willing to build them, I would. At first, I was unskilled and wrecked more guns than I built. But eventually, I learned patience, learned about a man named Larry Potterfield and his instructional videos, and simply slowed down enough to produce more than I destroyed.
The path, while expensive, was a lot of fun. I built various 760’s and 7600’s even though they weren’t my cup of tea. In that endeavor, I found that the pump gun was indeed a great platform - and that if I’d simply put a scope on mine early on, I might still be using one to this day (with a scope in medium rings, they fit and handle just fine for me). I built all kinds of lightweight bolt guns, I created Browning BAR carbines before they were a thing, and I experimented and modified all brands of lever guns - my all time favorite. During this time, I also became acquainted with Skinner peep sights, and some of the behind the scene engineers at rifle manufacturers.
As this gunsmithing journey in my garage was taking place, I remained steadfast in contacting the rifle companies to produce the guns similar to what I’d been building in my now famous “Frankenlab” (the name given to my gun-smithing space that grew in both scope and its reputation for wrecking perfectly good rifles while navigating my steep learning curve).
The lightweight carbines that I built, modified, traded and sold, and rebuilt over and over, taught me that there were all manner of gun companies that have models in their lineups that can be made into some remarkably competent tracking platforms. Yet, I kept getting rejected by those same gun companies. But then a corner was turned - Remington’s Marlin started to show mild interest, not because they had some profound turnaround in their minds about my newfound gun knowledge or abilities, or that my insights into the Northeast gun market had value, but rather, I think out of a simple desire for some much needed positive press, and conveniently I was also an author.
Marlin at the time was in deep trouble with multiple bankruptcies lurking in their future. Remington, their parent company at the time, was building cheaper versions of their famous high-end guns, and fell prey to the “race to the bottom” corporate model, often pursuing a more low-price-motivated customer demographic at the steep price of the loss of quality control.
Make no mistake, serving a market based on affordability is some gun companies bread and butter, and they are great at it, producing some pretty great guns at phenomenal prices. But Remington wasn’t in a position to move into that space effectively. Their guns at the time were a mess, they had billions in bad debt, and unfortunately Marlin was mixed up in that quagmire. Even so, Marlin was the one division at Remington that seemed to have a legit fire to rekindle their brand, and sadly, just as they were turning the corner to building some good lever actions again, Remington folded, and Marlin along with it.
It was in those last months of the turnaround when Marlin had finally said yes to a visit from Hal and I, and a new Trapper 45/70 was given to us to test. My first foray into the actual belly of a gun company was made.
Enter Henry Repeating Arms
A few years before my time with the Marlin experiment, I’d begun buying, hunting and modifying various Henry lever actions. At the time, they hadn’t added the side gate loading on their rifles, and the predominance of the brass receiver models was a turnoff to me for tracking. (Ironically, I now want to take one on the track for nostalgic reasons).
While those first models were slightly ill-balanced, and definitely had cowboy action DNA rather than hunter focused DNA, I saw real engineering intelligence in every model, plus every one I owned was super accurate and reliable. There were little details on their production guns that were the small fixes that I was forced to make on my custom Marlin and Winchester guns. For example, no lever action should have 2 safeties. It’s aesthetically wrong, and frankly unnecessary, and can be confusing and thus dangerous - especially in grizzly or other dangerous game territory.
Unlike these brands where I removed the extra safeties, Henrys only have a single hammer safety, and their hammer covers the firing pin when on safe, making it not only very easy to see if it’s on safe, but also making sure no debris or snow can get on the firing pin. It’s a small detail - but in the tracking woods it’s just smart. Another example - eventually they added the side gate loading port, while also retaining the tube feed magazine. So now you could load the gun conventionally in the side gate, and then dump the rounds out the tube at the end of the day - thus removing the dangers inherent in running live rounds through the action to unload the rifle at the end of the day when you are most tired. Again, a small detail, but profoundly important.
Now don’t get me wrong, I will always love a good Marlin or Browning lever gun, but as Henry developed their lines, I found myself gravitating my purchases to more and more of them until I landed on what at the time was their new Long Ranger model.
The Henry Big Woods Long Ranger
By the time I handled my first Henry Long Ranger, I was doing less gun-smithing. I was fairly knowledgeable by this point, and knew what to look for in a legit tracking platform. Remington and Marlin were gone at this point, and the used 760 and 7600 marketplace was drying up with ridiculous prices for even a marginal example. With this fact in mind, I asked myself, what guns on the market can check off as many 760 or 7600 boxes in stock trim, since the pump guns are seen as the holy grail for the tracking art?
At a minimum, the rifle would need to have a weight of 7lbs or less (a 760 carbine weighs in at 6lbs 15 ozs), it would need to have a 18 ½ inch carbine barrel, a flush 4-round magazine, no multiple safeties, would need to balance in the middle of your hand when carrying, be reliable and accurate, have a removable clip that is easy to work, and hopefully have a better trigger than the atrocious 870 "Sponge Bob" unit found on the Remington. It would also need to fire a caliber worthy of killing whitetails and black bear to say, 300 yards. Since no one builds a pump gun platform anymore, the only inherently “fast-action” models that compared immediately in stock form were the Henry Long Ranger and the Browning BLR and BAR platforms. All would require modifications, but one model checked off the most boxes right off the bat—the Henry.
While Browning's offerings are great options, the BLR’s moving trigger (the trigger is attached to the lever) is not the best. It also has a balance point when cut to carbine length that tips backwards in your hand. So there is some work there. Otherwise it's light, accurate and checks off all the rest of the boxes. The BARs are one of my favorites, but frankly they don’t carry the best (fat in the middle), and many states make it difficult to purchase a semi-auto nowadays. That was a big consideration that knocked it out of the running.
So what about the Henry Long Ranger? First off, Tom Kotz, one of Henry’s top execs, was open to do the project with Big Woods Bucks. Having a storied brand and their executive staff be motivated to do the project with us was a big deal for me and for our Team; it was a long time coming. Everyone here knew the decade of struggle to get a gun company on board. When Tom had enthusiasm for the idea, we knew the project would get the engineering support it needed to be done right and to our specs.
Next, we knew The Long Ranger checked off nearly every box: Trigger good? Yup. Accurate? Absolutely. 4 round clip? Check. Was the engineering solid? Check. Henry makes great barrels so accuracy is built in. The Long Ranger was created with balance in mind and it has the hunter’s satin finish laid atop grade AA walnut, so it looks and feels the part of a North Country classic. Again, Marlin, Browning and several other manufacturers could have built Big Woods Carbines to be sure - it’s just the easiest path is the one where the most boxes get checked right off the bat and the support is there from the factory and the teams making the guns. That was the case here, and the results speak for themselves.
All American-Made
This brings us to another point. Henrys are “Made in America, or not made at all.” Like so many other products and services that Big Woods Bucks offers or supports, being American-made is high on our list of values. Also, Henry has world renowned customer service, so should anything go wrong, Henry will work hard to make it right.
Once the rifle and 308 cartridge were chosen and the initial meetings between BWB and the Henry brass were behind us, we simply gave them all the rest of the spec’s and began the final details. We contacted Andy Larsson at Skinner Sights, ordered a bunch of our BWB Tracker Series Peep Sights to be installed on the receivers, along with a Marbles custom fiber optic one-piece front sight to be screwed onto the barrel, and the rifle was produced and tested. Once our Team prototypes were seen to work fantastic in the big woods and the challenges that environment produces, the guns were immediately put into production.
The Future
Over the next few years, BWB and Henry will work hard to continue building off the success of this remarkable gun with some additional Henry/BWB collaborative tracking rifles. We look forward to fulfilling our mission to create a Woodsman Revolution with creating and offering legitimate, quality tracking firearms for both the enthusiast and the collector alike!
