Marlin Lever Action Model 336 in .35 Remington

“The Quintessential Eastern Woods Rifle”

This evening I went to the local gun club with one of my favorite rifles for whitetails and black bear. It is the Marlin mdl 336 in .35 Remington. This gun has its origin in the work of John M. Marlin born in 1836 in Connecticut. During the civil war, John worked for Colt and in 1870, he hung his sign out on State Street in New Haven, Connecticut. He started out making his own revolvers and derringers. He was able to attract some very talented individuals to his business resulting in Marlin models 1891 and 1893. The model 1891 of course was used by Annie Oakley in her shows. Those model are what are today known as the famous mdl 39 and the mdl 336. These happen to be the oldest shoulder arms in the world still being produced. Guess you could say the mdl 336 has been around for a while.

All you have to do is pick one up, close your eyes and shoulder it and you understand why it is so popular. In addition to the nostalgia of growing up with TV Westerns, it points like an extension of your arm. I used to own one with a receiver sight installed and in my then youthful eyes, it was deadly. As I remember it had different screw in apertures and I created my own “ghost ring” set up by simply removing the aperture for quick alignment. My current one wears a 1.5X4.5X20 Swift scope and I think I am faster today with that scope on 2.5X than I was with the open sights back then.

I arrived at the gun club a little late and did not have a lot of time for testing, however the conditions were ideal. There was no perceptible wind at all and it was around 78 degrees out. It had been a while since I had a session with the .35 Rem and with limited time, I shot off the bench at 50 and 100 yards, per the range finder I was using.

As you can see from the photos, I ended up with a 50 yard group of 1.5 inches for 3 shots. I then moved the target out to 100 yards and in the fading light fired an additional 5 shots without letting the bbl cool. Interestingly enough the 100 yards group was also 1.5 center to center, extreme spread.

With those groups I will unlikely be heading for “Camp Perry” to compete, however you can be sure I will take it with me to the Adirondacks and likely to use it in some of the counties in NYS which opened to rifle last year. Most of our shots in NY for whitetails come on the near side of 100 yards and for that, the .35 Rem gets the job done.

I will be following this up with a range session using the new “Hornady Leverevolution” ammo in .35 Rem utilizing a special pointed tip bullet in 200 grain weight. The new load utilizes a special elastomer pointed flex tip that is SAFE in lever action rifles with tubular magazines like the mdl 336. The ballistic coefficient of the Hornady load is .300 (vs.) somewhere in the neighborhood of .195 for the round nose 200 grain slugs. If you are not into such numbers, it translates into the Hornady slug delivering more energy and retaining velocity better down range. I have yet to try a box as I had a good supply of the Remington 200 grain round nose core lokts on hand. I am going to pick up a box at the local Gander Mountain Store and repeat the exercise at 50 and 100 yards, and stretch that out to 175 and possibly 200 and report back.

Based on early test reports I expect to see quite an improvement in both group size and extending the range of the .35. It seemed to take a long time for Hornady to get this ammo on dealers shelves and now that it is finally here, I am going to test it.

Dan (original article 2007)
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Proverbs 14:12 KJV "There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death"