I've been hunting with my Marlin 30-30 a lot this season and was wondering how you guys set your trigger and safety combination when on the stand? The type of safety will likely help determine this, but the idea is to have a gun that's safe and yet can be quickly and quietly readied to fire. For example, with the trigger in the halfcock position, isn't the gun just as safe from an accidental discharge as having the safety on? Do you leave the safety off when the trigger is set to halfcock? Or perhaps you leave the trigger fully cocked with the safety on. And what about those who use a lever gun like the Winchester Model 94 that doesn't have a safety on the receiver but can only be fired with the lever pressed against the neck of the stock? Do you consider the lever safety sufficicient with the trigger fully cocked?

There should be no safety on a lever gun.

As such, I keep a round chambered and the hammer half-cocked.

My Glenfield 30A has one in the chamber, and the hammer down when I’m in the stand. I usually hunt with a T/C Encore muzzleloader and centerfire, so cocking the hammer is second nature.

This.
Close thread.

So if your lever gun has a safety, you just might as well leave it off and only use the trigger's halfcock position to protect against accidental discharge. Correct?

Of course, this assumes that in the height of a relapse into Buck Fever, you don't forget to pull the trigger back to its fully cocked position.

Otherwise, when sitting on the stand, leave the safety on and the trigger fully cocked as would be the case with most of your deer rifles.

My dad's old Winchester 32 spc.has no safety except for the position of the hammer, the New Winchester 357, I just acquired has a safety on it. I would have either safety off and half [censored] or safety on and full [censored]. Safety is first.

No safety and no scope?

Mine have a safety-it’s called the half cocked position.

If a lever gun has a safety, you remove it.

Didn't say anything about optics. There is zero need for a single action, manually operated firearm to have a mechanical safety.

I don’t use the safety on a lever gun. I’d rather it didn’t have one.

My model 94 has a safety. It's called half-cocked.

The rest of my rifles have safeties also. They're called the guy behind the trigger.

X2 Half cocked is safety.

I suspected my post would generate some lively discussion, and that it has.

As with any topic, it's easy to find someone who addresses it will some level of authority.

"I recently got an email from Ed Harris which touched on this very subject. Talking about the Marlin pistol-caliber lever actions, he says:

“The crossbolt safety of modern Marlins is wonderful and permits safe carry with the chamber loaded. This is safer than carrying with the hammer down and safety off, because in that manner the gun could fire if the hammer were struck or the rifle dropped.

When I worked at NRA I was aware of accidental discharges when the hammer jarred off the half-[censored] notch. The hammer being heavy enough, and pistol primers sensitive enough, the gun would fire even with the reduced hammer fall from the half-[censored]. We set this up in the lab and reproduced it with .38 Special loads regularly. Less often with harder primers in .357 and .44 Magnum, but it could still occur."

It appears the excitement that comes with pulling back and fully locking the trigger when you first see that huge buck is something at least several of you enjoy with your lever guns. I like that plan as well, so long as I don't forget that I'm hunting with a lever gun and forget to do it during all the excitement.

Marlin 336 and BLR circa 1971 that I use have no crossbolt safety. Half [censored] over a loaded chamber has never presented a problem for me on any of my old lever actions.

After some additional reading on the subject, it appears halfcock failures is not the issue. The greater risk is created by the trigger being left fully cocked each time the action is fully cycled in order to place a cartridge into the chamber. This places the gun in a ready to fire condition with no mechanism to block an accidental release of the hammer. After loading each and every cartridge, the gun must be manually placed in the halfcock or safe trigger position.

Say what you want, but a firearm that is always placed in the ready to fire condition each and every time a cartridge is loaded carries greater risk. I'll even go further and say that based on what I know now, I would never give a high-powered lever gun to a kid if it doesn't include a later design safety mechanism.

"Many lever-action rifles have external hammers with halfcock notches. For many years, this was considered an adequate safety position for the hammer when the rifle was in the carry mode. The problem is, when the rifle is loaded and a round chambered, the hammer is left in the cocked position. The only way to release it to the halfcock notch is to pull the trigger and ease the hammer forward with the thumb or finger. For those with minimal dexterity or just not paying attention, this creates a dangerous potential to release the hammer too quickly or too far forward. In either case, an unexpected discharge could occur. To eliminate the potential hazard, many recently manufactured lever-action rifles have a manual safety to block the hammer from contacting the firing pin."

I suppose greater levels of stupidity have developed in people in the last 40 years. The same safety device has been used on lever actions since the 1860 Henry, revolvers since 1836, and muzzleloaders for a good while before that.

We all know that legal accountability for stupidity has since been tranferred from the owners of products to the companies that manufactured them.

Still, we should offer credit to all efforts to make guns safer to use.

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Chambered, half-cocked.

Marlin 45-70, safety removed ( after missing the biggest deer in my life because of the safety lol ) and replaced with a saddle ring. I keep a round chambered and half cocked.

I use the safety on my lever gun, just like the safety on a bolt action. (it’s a M99 )