BLACK POWDER

than-standard barrel but was still 20 inches in length. Those Marlin Baby Carbines also had short magazines, and the “Baby” name was rather well deserved because those carbines had a weight of just over 5 pounds.

Trapper versions of the Winchester Models of 1892 and 1894 were also made. John Wayne carried a Model ’92 carbine with a shorter-than-standardlength barrel in Stagecoach and again as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit Whether those were original trappers or not, I can’t say.

The standard barrel length for a Model 1873 Winchester carbine is 20 inches. Why the imported Uberti versions of that carbine have a 19-inch barrel is something I don’t understand, but being just 1 inch shorter does not put them into the trapper category. The old trapper versions of the Model

1873 often had 14- or 15-inch barrels and now the replicas of those guns, which are made to today’s standards, have 16-inch barrels. With the 16-inch barrels, the new trappers are certainly shorter, in both look and feel, than the standard-length carbines.

CURRENTLY THE MODEL 1873 trapper is offered by Cimarron Firearms Company (cimarron-firearms.com), made by Uberti with the 16-inch barrel and available in .44-40 or .45 Colt calibers (and I’ve seen similar guns advertised in .38 Special/.357 Magnum caliber). Those are fine-looking guns. Even so, they have one characteristic that I do not favor and this is merely a personal thing. On the recently made carbines from Cimarron (and other importers), the front sight is mounted to the top of the forward barrel and magazine band. That is actually authentic, copying the way it was done on the first models of the 1873. Even so, I don’t appreciate that nearly as much as the later versions, which had the front sight mounted to the top of the barrel just behind that forward barrel/ magazine band. With that feature in mind, I told myself that if I ever found a Uberti trapper in .44-40 with the front sight mounted to the barrel, it would somehow become mine.

Eventually I did find one, or somehow it found me. This one was imported quite a while ago by Navy Arms Company (navyarms.com), and although this isn’t a new rifle, it’s in fine condition. The front sight is just what I was looking for and the rear sight was the Uberti copy of the old Winchester carbine sight. With the 16-inch barrel, this short carbine has an overall length