Walnut Hill

The Marlin 336 has been “that other lever action” for more than a century, if not strictly by name, then certainly in form. It’s the Marlin Model 1893 in a more modern guise, renamed first the Model 36 and later, the 336.

Leaving aside some modest modifications, it has been in production for 130 years now with its only rival in that regard being Winchester’s Model 1894. This is fitting because the two have been bitter rivals the entire time.

At this point, I could state bluntly, that of the two, the Marlin 336 is far superior, but that would be pointless. After all, that would make me the fourth or fifth-generation gun writer who has said as much and what good has it done?

On the other hand, the 336 is still in production in the U.S. (thanks now to Sturm, Ruger & Co.), which is more than I can say for the 94, which is now made for Browning in Japan. This is quibbling, I know, and we should just be grateful both are still being made somewhere and still available. The Savage 99, which on the basis of pure cold-hearted objectivity, was probably the best all-around lever-action design of the three, is long gone.

At this point, I should confess to a sentimental attachment to the Marlin 336 because it was the first big-game rifle I ever owned – a rifle I bought with my own money, earned at a rate of five bucks a week working on a farm when I was 15 years old.

The tale of exactly how all this played out deserves a little attention, if for no other reason than to show how things have changed – and not for the better.

My family moved to the country when I was 13, and by the age of 14, thanks to a single-shot 22 and a plethora of groundhogs (woodchucks, to you sophisticates), I was gun-struck, hunting-struck, gun-magazine-struck and well on my way to achieving the level of fascination that has dominated my life. Four years before that, we’d bought an old hunting cabin on a lake up north and an ancient Hoppe’s gun-cleaning kit was found up in the rafters. With the remnants of the No. 9 in the bottle, it was the beginning of another addiction. Anyway, the two factors combined to make me who I am, for good or ill.

Exactly how I settled on a Marlin 336 instead of a Winchester 94, and a 35 Remington rather than a 30-30, I cannot remember. It must have been something I read because there were two kinds of deer rifles in use in our neck of the north woods: The 94, and various degrees of sporterized Lee-Enfield. Those were all you saw when you came across deer hunters gathered by the road at midday.

Anyway, a 336 it was, and that raised an eyebrow or two in Pilon Marine, one of our two gun shops in town. A salesman named Gord became my pal. First, he smilingly stuck my name on the box with the 336 in it and took my $20 deposit along with a promise of regular weekly payments. Henceforth, when I bought anything there, from ammunition to a hunting coat to a Williams 5-D sight for the Marlin, Gord gave me a discount.

It took about four months to pay off the balance, and I was then left with the task of hitchhiking home with an obvious gun box under my arm and smuggling it into the house. For some reason, telling my parents about all this had slipped my mind.

(A decade after all this took place, a kid in Ottawa carried out a shooting at his high school, killing one and wounding another and as I recall, his rifle was a Marlin. This led, in 1977, to the beginning of the endless round of ever more restrictive gun laws in Canada. That event rather resonated with me.)

But way back then, there I was, 15 years old, and in possession of a high-powered rifle (that’s what we called anything not a 22), purchased legally, possessed legally, with the only raised eyebrow being my choice of caliber. No one – not a single person – suggested I shouldn’t have it. When I finally got up the nerve to tell my parents, my father’s reaction was a desire to try it out, while my mother simply requested that I not shoot my sister.

Even at that tender age, when boys are usually distracted by other things (girls, hockey, more girls) I was a carnivorous reader and relentless researcher and read everything I could get on the Marlin 336 and lever actions in general.

I learned a lot. Cartridges of the World (1st Ed., 1964) assured me the 35 Remington was superior to the 30-30 if black bears were a possibility – and they were. Our standard Ontario (Canada) license then, in the fall, was “deer and bear,” and we had a spring black-bear season as well.

Gun Digest had an article about relative accuracy in lever actions with tubular magazines, and advised that with some minor modifications, I could expect to put five shots into 4 inches at 100 yards and that was plenty good enough for a deer rifle.

The major advantage of the Marlin 336 over the Winchester 94, I learned, was its side ejection, which allowed the mounting of a scope low over the action. Some more learned writers suggested it was slightly stronger, too, but I couldn’t say. Not having the money for a scope, I invested instead in a Williams 5-D receiver sight. “5-D” stood for five dollars, an economy model that, even by 1966, sold for six dollars. For comparison, a Williams Foolproof was listed at $10, and the Lyman 48 – the aristocrat of receiver sights – at $12.50.

Jack O’Connor liked receiver sights but insisted I remove the screw-in aperture and “throw it away” since it was too small for hunting use. I removed it, but couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, and I included it with the 336 when, seven years later, I sold the rifle to help finance my first trip to Africa.

It would be nice to say I shot my first whitetail with that rifle or my first black bear, but such is not the case. If memory serves, I did kill a groundhog with it, as well as a rabbit, and during a heavy snowfall while out deer hunting and somewhat turned around, a ruffed grouse descended onto a log in an eruption of snow. I took its head off and when I made it back to the cabin in almost darkness and ate it for supper.

One thing I learned from the Marlin 336, is that one should not dismantle something willy-nilly, not knowing if one can get it back together. It took me a few tries as the forend was the main problem. But soon, I could get the lever off and the bolt out and I learned not to let the ejector fall to the ground in the process. If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can still feel the rifle coming apart as it should, and going back together as it should. With even a little more effort here – I can smell Hoppe’s No. 9, with the rifle in pieces on my bed, on a rainy November afternoon.

For those who do not pay attention to such details, this is Rifle issue No. 336 (September – October 2024), signifying that we began publication 56 years ago. This was just about the time all of the above was taking place in my life. It just seemed appropriate to take this opportunity to write about a great rifle.

We’ve all come a long way in those years, although I do wonder, from time to time, what ever became of my beloved Marlin 336. I hope it’s well.