One of my favorite old-time TV westerns is The Rifleman, starring Chuck Connors. The show aired on ABC and ran for five years from 1958-1963. Connors stood an imposing six-foot, six inches, so before landing his gig on The Rifleman, Connors played professional sports and is one of only a handful of American athletes to have played both Major League Baseball (with the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs) and in the National Basketball Association (with the Rochester Royals and the Boston Celtics). Connors was also pursued by the Chicago Bears to play professional football, but a football career never developed.

The uncredited star of the series was arguably the rifle used by Connors, which was a modified 1892 Winchester .44-40 carbine. The rifle was actually a little ahead of its time in the series, which was set in the late 1870s and early 1880s, which meant that Conner’s character, Lucas McCain, was using a rifle about twelve years before it was ever produced.

In the opening scene to the show, McCain is walking down the center of Main Street in North Fork, New Mexico Territory, rapid-firing the Winchester at some off-screen foe. Although the .44-40 Winchester carried eleven rounds in its magazine, viewers can watch McCain working the lever action on the rifle to fire off twelve shots. The reason for this is that the blanks being fired were shorter than the actual standard .44-40 Winchester Center Fire cartridges, so they were able to fit twelve rounds in the magazine. If you listen closely, however, you can hear a thirteenth round being fired. This additional round was dubbed into the audio track to sync the firing with the theme music for the show.

What I always got a kick out of was that after emptying his rifle in the opening scene, McCain deems it adequate to remove a single bullet from his shirt pocket in order to reload.