Henry Repeating Arms' New Steel Lever Action Rifle

Welcome to 21st century, lever-gun deer hunting with the 360 Buckhammer

October 25, 2025 By Patrick Sweeney

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Ever since the first lever-action rifle hit the market back in 1866, there has always been a lever-action rifle in production (except for wartime production demands) by one or more manufacturers. Why? The lever-action rifle is a grand combination of sleek, handy, compact, and ergonomic. It is light enough to be easy to pack, yet heavy enough to dampen recoil. It can be (and is) chambered in a wide range of cartridges that are eminently suitable for hunting on the North American continent. The mechanism is simple, easy to keep clean and oiled, and the parts are robust, which sounds like an advertising campaign for the Henry line of rifles, and perhaps it ought to be. The one sent here for testing is the Steel Lever Action .360 Buckhammer. (Actually, they sent me a steamer trunk sized shipment of rifles, but the boss said I could only write up one of them.)

The Full Run Down

Let’s start in the middle, since that’s the heart of the lever action. A moment’s glance and thought will tell you that this is a close copy of the Marlin 336, which is a very good thing. As a gunsmith, I worked over a slew of 336s, and I can tell you this: they are almost indestructible. You will have to work to break one. You have to be really diligent to make one not work properly, including the 336 brought to me for accuracy problems, problems caused by the owner feeding it entirely the wrong cartridge. The Henry is just as robust, and just as easy to operate and simple to take down for cleaning.

The right side has the ejection port and the loading gate. You’ll see four screws there. Three of these you never need to touch. The one on the receiver extension is for taking it apart for cleaning. (We’ll get to that.) On the left side the receiver is a blank slate. Oh, there are three ends of screws, and the uppermost end you see is the base of the ejector, which is held in place by the bolt.

Left and right side view — (top) The Henry Steel Lever Action is classic and classy, understated, and elegant. (bottom) If you do not feel the need for a scope, the Henry Steel Lever Action is ready to go right out of the box. (Photo provided by author.)

On top of the receiver, there are four drilled and tapped holes for mounting a scope base. Henry makes it easy for you (or your gunsmith) because they tell you right up front that the base you need is the Weaver 63B or its equivalent. No measure and test-fit, as we had to do in the old days. No proprietary bases, no, not from Henry. That is, if you want to mount a scope. The kinds of hunting that call for a lever-action happen in thick woods or across short distances out from a blind. With good eyesight, and some practice, iron sights are plenty good enough out to 100 yards. To be truthful, a lot of hunters will not notice a whitetail wandering through the woods, even inside of 100 yards from their blind. It’s in their DNA to go un-noticed.

So, Henry puts a front blade with a brass bead on it, and on the back of the barrel, ahead of the receiver, they install a semi-buckhorn with diamond inset. To adjust is easy. Lift the spring-loaded rear sight and slide the stepped baseplate to raise or lower the point of impact. To adjust windage, there are two small screws on the plate set into the rear sight. Loosen, nudge, tighten and re-shoot. No, it isn’t a click-adjustable target sighting system, but once it is set you will know it stays set.

Front sight — The front sight had a brass bead for aiming. (Photo provided by author.)

The handguard and stock are walnut, and they have each been given a very sharp-looking and sharp checkering area. The handguard checkering extends all the way around the handguard, not just in a couple of panels, one on each side. The handguard is held on by means of a nosecap, which is a machined steel cup that slides over the magazine tube. There’s a cross-screw that holds it in place, and the nosecap also has a front sling swivel stud on it as well. There’s a matching sling swivel stud on the bottom of the stock, which sports a rubber recoil pad. Some of you might be thinking, “Rubber recoil pad? Recoil isn’t that bad.” Maybe, maybe not, but it does make shooting more pleasant, and if practice is more fun then you’re more likely to do it. I’ve never understood the affectation for hard rubber buttplates, or brass, or steel ones. I like shooting, but they make it less fun.

For the longest time, lever-action rifles came with the hammer machined for a half-cock notch. This was so you could lower the hammer halfway down. (Carefully, and with a good grip on it.) This allowed you to sit in your blind, or stalk through the woods, not having the hammer at full cock. And also not have the other choice being the hammer resting on the firing pin. Henry has brought the design into the 21st century, and so the hammer on the Steel Lever Action (and other Henry rifles as well) uses a transfer bar. The transfer bar is activated by a lever built into the trigger. When you press the trigger back to fire the Henry, the trigger lever cams the hammer-mounted transfer bar up. The transfer bar then rides on the hammer such that it fills the gap between the hammer and the rear of the firing pin when the hammers hits home.

Hammer view of rifle — You can see the transfer bar, on the front face of the hammer. If the trigger isn’t pulled and held back, the transfer bar won’t transfer. (Photo provided by author.)

If you have the hammer fully cocked and something jars it out of engagement, the trigger spring will push the trigger forward. This prevents the trigger from camming the transfer bar. The gap remains unfilled, and the rifle won’t fire. The explanation sounds complicated, but the mechanism is really pretty simple and straightforward. It also means the Steel Lever Action does not need a crossbolt safety in the receiver.

Operations

Disassembled lever action — This is as far as you need to go to clean the bolt, receiver and bore. (Photo provided by author.)

Operating the Steel Lever Action is simple. A quick point: you do this at the range or at hunting camp while outside of the cabin. Pointing the muzzle in a safe direction, use the nose of a cartridge to press the loading gate in. (The gate is a single piece of spring steel, it will flex out of the way.) Push the cartridge fully into the loading gate. Once the magazine is full, you can’t fit any more in. You can at this point, if you are hunting, simply leave it as-is. You can, when you need a round in the chamber, work the action and have a chambered cartridge and a cocked hammer in a second.

Or, you can do the lever-action two-step: point the muzzle in a safe direction. Work the lever and chamber a round. Grasp the hammer with a finger and thumb, and then press the trigger while preventing the hammer from moving. Let go of the trigger. Now ease the hammer down. It will not stop at half-cock, there is none. If you wish, you can load another round into the magazine through the loading gate. You are fully topped-off. Another way to do this is when you start empty. Open the action. Drop a cartridge into the ejection port and close the bolt. Now do the two-step. Then, load through the loading gate. When you need to fire, you have to thumb-cock the hammer, which is a lot less noisy and takes less motion than working the lever.

To unload, you stand the Steel Lever Action muzzle-up. Rotate the magazine tube spring assembly and lift it out of the tube. You can now point the muzzle down and pour the cartridges out. Once they are out, work the lever to eject the chambered round (if there is one) and leave it open. You are not unloaded. The clever among you will think, “A-ha, I can load it the same way.” I thought of that, but there is some peculiarity of the rim diameter and geometry of the .360 Buckhammer, in the magazine tube, that makes it, well, clumsy. I had to jiggle the rifle as I pressed the tube down, to keep it from catching on the rim of each cartridge as it passed over them. So, no, it isn’t the quick and easy way to load that it looks like it was going to be.

The .360 Buckhammer is an interesting cartridge. It is, basically, a .30-30 case that has been necked-out to accept and hold a .359-inch-diameter bullet. In talking to shooters about it, I’ve had it compared to both the .35 Remington and the .35 Whelen. Well, not really. The .35 Remington is a good little cartridge but with a max pressure of 33,000 PSI, it can’t generate the velocities of the .360. It falls some 200 fps behind the .360. And the Whelen, while it can exceed the velocities of the .360 by 400+ fps, is a longer cartridge, and requires a bolt-action rifle to handle it. Plus, both of those cartridges are not allowed in certain hunting areas because they have a case neck. The .360, being a straight-wall cartridge, is permitted by the DNR in handgun-only areas as well as the many straight-wall-rifle-cartridge-only deer-hunting states such as Ohio.

Range Results

Target with ammo and rifle — This is the kind of accuracy you can expect from a Henry rifle. (Photo provided by author.)

In testing, I found the Steel Lever Action to be brilliantly accurate. In the chrono work, I found myself having to use the club’s 100-yard range, so I used one of the rifle gongs as an aiming point. Shooting standing offhand, I hit the gong on the first ten shots in a row doing chrono work. This despite a heavy trigger, a trigger that I’d be certain to send back to Henry were I to be keeping this rifle. Henry is proud of their warranty, and wants customers to be satisfied, so I’m sure it would come back better. For accuracy work, I used the factory iron sights at 50 yards, and the results were excellent, even brag-worthy.

Disassembly is easy. Unload. Leave the action open. Use a properly-fitting screwdriver to remove the lever pivot screw. Pull the lever out. Now, pull the bolt out of the receiver. The ejector is loose, so make sure you don’t lose it. On reassembly, place the ejector in its slot, with the small stud on it inserted in the locating hole in the receiver. Slide the bolt in, then catch the lever into the bolt, line up the screw and replace it.

So, there it is. A light, handy, powerful rifle that has a wider accepted area of use for hunting than other rifles. Accurate, soft-enough in recoil and with a rubber recoil pad that practicing wouldn’t be an onerous chore. The Federal Premium (FederalPremium.com) and Remington ammunition (Remington.com) tested are built for hunting, so you can count on performance in the field. The listed price is something you can pretty much count on being not the price, your local gun shop will have it at a lower price, and even at that it is a great deal. I won’t bore you with the inflation adjustment, but when I bought a used 336 lever action back during the Reagan Administration, the price then equates to more than the price of a new Henry today.

Even if where you hunt you aren’t restricted to a straight-wall cartridge, the Steel Lever Action in .360 Buckhammer is a great rifle at a great price.