Jeff Cooper's scout rifle concept has been produced by several mainstream manufacturers --  Steyr, Springfield Armory, Savage Arms, and Ruger, to name a few.

According to Cooper, the ideal scout rifle was to be based on a short bolt action, weighing seven pounds or so before scope mounting. It was also meant to be a short rifle no more than 39 inches in length.  He envisioned the rifle chambered in a mid-power, .30 caliber cartridge such as the .308 Winchester. One of the most important features of the rifle was the long eye relief scope. This allowed use of the scope while still having a full view of one’s surroundings.

One of the rifles Cooper credited for his concept was the Winchester 1894 carbine. In the past, Winchester even offered their version of a Lever Scout rifle.

We’ve adopted Cooper’s concept, taken it back to its 19th century roots -- the Winchester 94, and added the latest in modern sighting technology to create our version of the Lever Scout rifle.

We picked the Winchester 94, for several reasons. Even though production of consumer grade 94s stopped a few years ago, there are millions of them out there in the used market place. Since the scope is mounted well forward, even the older top eject models can be used without any problems.

Our first decision was caliber. In keeping with Cooper’s ideas, the cartridge had to be popular and widely available. Our two top choices of cartridges, available anywhere, were the 30-30 Winchester and the Remington .44 Magnum. Both are chambered in lever-action rifles and are quite reliable.

After much discussion, the .44 Magnum was the winner.  Firstly, you can load almost twice the number of  .44’s in the magazine than 30-30’s. But the flexibility of the .44 Mag, with many bullet styles and weights, made it the obvious choice.  In a pinch, loaded with heavy bullets, it makes for a reasonable bear defense gun. With the classic 240 grain bullets available everywhere, it can do just about anything needed inside of 200 yards.

Marlin makes a very fine .44 Magnum, lever-action rifle that could be used for this project. However the Winchester has some advantages. The most important is that it has a feed system designed for longer cartridges. This allows custom bullets that are longer than industry standards to be used in the Winchester that would jam in the Marlin.

In the image, we compare a standard length .44 cartridge to one carrying a Belt Mountain Punch bullet. This deep penetrating hunting bullet would never cycle in the Marlin action.  Although the magazine capacity in the Winchester drops from 9 to 8 cartridges  when using these longer bullets,  it’s still a very potent combination.

The Winchester 94 Trapper model has the benefit of being lighter (6 lbs)  and shorter (34 ¼ in) than the Marlin (6-7 lbs / 37.5 in) and comes with a 16 inch barrel while the Marlin comes with a 20 inch barrel.

Our choice of scope for this project was the Aimpoint Comp M4S. This is a premium red dot scope was designed for use by the US military on AR-15’s and M4 Carbines. This is where the 19th century technology of the rifle and the 21st century optics had a tough time coming together. The Winchester we chose, being a later model AE version, was drilled and tapped for conventional scope mounting.

However the M4S was designed to mount on a standard, military style, Picatinny rail. The only rail we could find that would work on the 94 was one made by XS sights. They are well known for their sight products and produce Picatinny rails for many other models. However, their offering for the Winchester 94 was a Weaver style rail. While the two rail styles share a common rail size, the slots in the Weaver rails are more narrow than on the Picatinny rails which prevented the M4S from mounting onto the XS rail. While there are many other optics that would have mounted on the Weaver rail, we have standardized on the M4S as our red dot scope and have them on several other rifles. Having the same optics picture on all rifles was important to us.

After a little thought, it became obvious that all we had to do was widen the slot in the Weaver rail to the same size as the Picatinny and our problem would be solved. A few minutes with a file that was safe on the edge, so as not to deepen the notch, and the Weaver rail was converted.

Installing the XS rail on a model 94 is a little more involved than just screwing it on. Since the barrel contour of the Winchester rifles vary a lot between models and years, the company could not make a rail that would fit all the rifles properly. Their solution was to fill the gap between the bottom of the rail and the barrel with epoxy. This creates a solid base for the rail to sit on and makes the mount rock solid.

We have read where people have advised not to actually glue the rail on but rather  to use some sort of release agent on the barrel to prevent the epoxy from sticking. We were a bit leery of this and wanted to ensure a reliable mount that would not move. If we ever wanted to remove the mount, it would not be a difficult task. While epoxy is a very strong adhesive it will fail at temperatures of around 500 degrees.  So taking the rail off would be a simple matter of unscrewing the screws and heating the rail with a propane torch. The epoxy would fail in a few minutes and the rail would fall off.  With care, these temperatures will not harm the barrel steel or cause it to lose its temper. Placing a temperature probe down the barrel, to a point right next to the rail while doing this, will allow you to monitor actual barrel temperature.

We actually wanted to prove this theory to ourselves. So, we epoxied a rail to the barrel of one of our older guns. After waiting several days for a maximum cure, we proceeded to remove it. (Note:  The epoxy puts out some noxious fumes as it breaks down so we advise that this be done outdoors. )

As predicted, the epoxy degraded pretty rapidly. The temperature of the rail reached almost 700 degrees on the rail side. However, in the barrel the temperature never went past 450 degrees. This was due to the epoxy itself acting as an insulator and the fact the heavy steel of the barrel dissipated heat much faster than the light weight rail.

After a quick clean up with some acetone to remove stray pieces of epoxy, the barrel looked just like before.

With our little side experiment out of the way, we proceeded to mount the rail on the 94. Everything went smoothly and after the epoxy cured we had a solid mount.

We’ve had this gun for over a year and used it quite often both at the range and in the field. Over the course of that time, it has never changed from its initial zero and the red dot points to the same place it did when we first sighted it in.

In conclusion, the Lever Scout is a lightweight and easy to carry rifle that packs a punch and will protect you from just about anything. It also makes a great woods hunting rifle for deer-sized game. It has become one of our favorite take-along rifles.