Winchester Model 72

The Winchester Model 72 is a tubular magazine-fed, bolt-action rimfire rifle chambered in .22 Short, .22 Long, and .22 Long Rifle, produced by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company from 1938 to 1959. A close derivative of the earlier box-magazine Model 69, it was Winchester's first bolt-action design built around a tube magazine running beneath the barrel, holding up to 20 rounds of .22 Short, 16 of .22 Long, or 15 of .22 Long Rifle. The action cocks on opening and is fed one round at a time from the tube by a cartridge lifter, making the rifle popular for informal plinking, small-game hunting, and marksmanship training. Fitted with a 25-inch round blued barrel, a one-piece walnut stock, an adjustable aperture rear sight, and a bead front sight, the Model 72 was an economical, well-made sporting rifle aimed at the youth and utility market. A revised version, the Model 72A, introduced a backswept bolt handle and minor internal refinements. Roughly 161,000 examples of the Model 72 and 72A were built over the rifle's twenty-one-year production run.