Another rare Marlin daily plinker, 39 Mountie

[North Country Gal]

Thanks. As far as 22 lever guns, it doesn't get any more classic than the Marlin 39. It's the granddaddy of all 22 lever guns. Everything else is a youngster by comparison. Shooting a 39 takes you back to another time. I get the same feeling with my pre-64 Model 94 Winchester.

I did upgrade the scope set up on the 39 just last week. It now wears a very rare 3x steel 5/8" tube Burris scout scope on an equally rare Bushnell Phantom scout mount. Optics are pristine, basically new in the box. This is a big upgrade over the jury rigged mount I was using. Once I get it loaded up, it's getting awfully hard to stop shooting this Marlin, now. It's become my favorite backyard plinker.

[Hatchdog]

That’s’ an interesting scope, 5/8” tube. Didn’t know modern scopes were available with such a small tube. That sure makes for a good looking set up.

[North Country Gal]

These 5/8", 3/4" and 7/8" tube scopes were from the early days of riflescopes, before everyone was scoping a rifle as an automatic thing. At the time, gun writers were pushing the new idea of using scopes on all rifles and gun makers responded by drilling and tapping more of their centerfire rifles for scope bases and adding grooved receivers to some of their older rimfire models. This would have been the 50s through the 70s, before 1" tube scopes became standard. No one on this side of the pond was using 30mm tube scopes, yet.

Some of these vintage steel tubed scopes in those old tube sizes have become quite collectible and now command some high prices.