Earlier this year I found myself at Range Ready, home of the Gun Talk folks, for Lever Fest. It was held as a celebration of the lever-action rifle, which has seen a significant resurgence in recent years, with companies like Marlin, Henry and Rossi expanding existing product lines, but also with companies such as Smith & Wesson and Savage introducing lever-action rifles. It’s this last entry, the Savage Arms Revel, that captured my attention at Lever Fest.
Now, I feel the need to back up a moment. First, I wrote up the Smith & Wesson Model 1854 last year and fell in love with lever-action rifles all over again. I’ve always been a fan, having inherited my grandfather’s Marlin Model 336 along with an Ithaca Arms Model 49 (which, I guess, is technically a falling-block action but it looks all the world like a classic levergun, and I taught my kids to shoot on it). Through the years I picked up a Rossi M92 in my favorite pistol caliber, .357 Magnum, as well as a Marlin Model 39A lever-action rimfire.
This rifle, combined with a recent injury that made shooting more powerful chamberings uncomfortable, meant I gravitated to the little Savage probably more than I would have under normal circumstances. The pistol-caliber rifles, even those in .44 Magnum, were certainly tolerable even with the recent surgery, but the .45-70 Govt. rifles were only “occasional” shooters for me. Again, no slight intended in any way, shape or form; just setting the stage for my focus on the Savage.
Picking up the Savage, I remembered just how magical a .22 LR lever-action rifle can be. I taught my kids to shoot on lever-action .22s, starting with the single-shot Ithaca M49 and progressing to the Marlin once safety and general sight picture were established. I’ve often opined that a lever-action rimfire, paired with a single-action revolver like a Single Six or New Frontier, a brick of middle-of-the-road .22 LR fodder and some steel or other reactive targets (cans, bottles, etc.) is about the cheapest way to have a ton of fun at the range for an entire afternoon.
The Revel, available in two basic configurations, the Classic and the DLX, distills this fun into its basic components. The Classic rifle is a lever-action .22LR boiled down to the essentials. Close your eyes. Picture a lever-action rifle. That’s the Revel Classic. The DLX offers upgraded wooden furniture and a threaded barrel, which allows a suppressor to be added for even greater shooting ease. The models we had at Lever Fest had Picatinny rails attached to the drilled-and-tapped receivers with red-dot sights attached. A suppressed lever-action rifle with a red-dot sight is about the platonic ideal of a fun time with a rifle. Paired with Range Ready’s steel range, with targets of all sizes and complexity as far as the eye can see? Well, I spent quite a bit of time with the Revel, let’s leave it at that. On the plus side, I can say it’s ridiculously reliable, as I easily shot the better part of a bulk-box of .22 LR through one over the course of an afternoon.
As part of the Lever Fest program, lead instructor Chris Cerino set up a number of challenges harkening to his appearance on “Top Shot” – we had to literally cut a rope with a .45-70 Govt., shoot a .44 Magnum over our shoulder using a mirror to sight it in and shot shotgun-shell hulls with the .22 LR, among some of the challenges. It was an amazing amount of fun, even if my shooting wasn’t where I wanted it to be (I’d like to think it was the recent surgery, but it had a lot more to do with a lack of practice). Cerino noted, on the rimfire challenge, that I had reverted to an old, bad habit of peeking over my sights after every shot – ignoring the basics – to check my work. Once I remembered my follow-through and stayed on the sights, my shooting improved. Imagine that. Pay attention to the basics and things fall into place…
Bottom line, though, is that shooting can also be a whole lot of fun in addition to a necessary, potentially life-saving skill. It’s important to remember the “fun factor” as we bring new folks into the shooting sports and the Second Amendment community, and a lever-action .22 LR rifle like the Savage Revel is a wonderful way to accomplish this.
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