Thanks, guys. I have been very fortunate in recent months, only down side is that I now have several .22’s that are too nice to shoot. Quite honestly I didn’t know what I was looking at with this 61, thought it was a WRF and didn’t realize that it was in such good condition. For various reasons I just wasn’t interested until I did a bit of research purely out of curiosity. I was looking for a “shooter” 61. I didn’t know Winchester made a 61 chambered in 22 Mag, turns out Winchester developed the cartridge in 1959 and the 61 Magnum in 1960. If my preliminary research is correct they only used this barrel stamping for a short time. All in all it was just too interesting a rifle to pass up. I paid a bit more than I wanted to for this little gem but I knew I’d kick myself if I passed it up.

I snagged this one at my local Cabela’s; their regional buyer tried to give me a hint about this rifle last week but it took me awhile to catch on. Surprisingly all of the orphans I’ve adopted recently have come from different collections as they have been able to buy several nice collections in recent months. Last year they couldn’t buy anything I was interested in but Curt and the other buyers have done right by me recently. Bad news is I’ve exhausted my gun fund so I’m going to have to sit on the sidelines for awhile. It’s been a really good run, it’s time to kick back and enjoy the show for awhile.

Mike