THE HENRY REPEATING ARMS MARE'S LEG COMING SOON

That's right. I wrote to Henry Repeating Arms via their email dealee on their contact me tab and promptly received a response from no less than the President of the company, Mr. Anthony Imperato, along with his wishes for a happy and healthy New Year.

I'm impressed. It's the second time in several weeks where the head of an organization has responded personally, and with great information, to an emailed question. It shows the folks have a grip on the company. The other person was Roy Huntington, Editor and potentiate of American Handgunner magazine. I wrote to Roy about tips on converting a S&W M1917 to a snubnose personal carry gun, as Roy had done. He took quite a bit of time to not only answer my questions but as per my request, refer me to some folks and then make some suggestions about things he would have done differently to his M1917 snubby conversion. Roy earned himself a subscription, and I'll be posting about my emails with Roy soon. Again, I'm impressed. If only the rest of America had this work ethic!

I asked Anthony Imperato if they were going to be producing a Mare's Leg in .22 and in .45 LC and the answer was yes on both counts. The .22 will be available in February and the .45LC in April. I asked if it was true that the .22 would MSRP at about $300, and since he said my information was correct, then that's good news too. The internet gun shops are offering them for less than $300, but they have none in stock yet either.

I know the Henry Mare's Leg is going to be solid. As I mentioned before, I've put one of their rifles through it's paces last year with El Fisho Jr, and we were both highly impressed by the trigger, the operation and construction, the reliability and most of all the accuracy and shootability of the Henry .22 lever action. We've been looking at them here and there since then, with an eye toward getting one, but now the decision has been made for us.

So quality of the gun aside, it's made in America. By Americans at an American owned company. Take a look at the Henry Repeating Arms website and look at the pics and the philosophy of the company. They are good Americans and thus I will buy firearms from them.

I'm going to get my local dealer to pre-order me one, and I would have done it today except his shop is closed on Mondays. At $250 for a .22 that the literature says will take shorts and longs as well as long rifle cartridges, you can shoot it all day for less than $20 if you were so inclined.

NOTE: I can't seem to download the pics that Mr. Imperato sent me of both of the Henry Repeating Arms Mare's Legs. They are in adobe format, so I'm going to figure out how to copy them to another format and then I'll post them in a later post. He sent a copy of the brochure as well as some pics of the guns.

The .22 is blued and appears full sized, weighing in at a little more than the Rossi variant. You can tell it is a .22 only by the size of the tube magazine. The .45 LC Henry has the "Golden" receiver and looks really sharp and frickin' heavy duty. I normally don't go for such adornment of firearms but you can't argue with how it looks.

Billy Ray was looking at the pics and has now decided he needs one, but wants his to be the Rossi Ranch Hand in .44 Magnum. Can't argue with that. Billy Ray is in prime rattler country where he lives, and that'd be a handy gun for the back 40. It would be very easy to attach an hi-ouput weapon light and laser combo to the bottom of the tube magazine or side of the barrel if you were using this weapon for home defense.

Since this is a handgun, what's to keep either Rossi or Henry from adapting one of their .45 LC models to take .410 shells? That, my friends, would be coolness.