I've owned and operated lever guns (Winchesters) for 40 years now and have never had an accidental discharge while unloading one. And I keep em fully loaded, never had feeding problems because of it. When I unload one, I short stroke the lever and unload em one at a time. Working the lever like you're shooting it to unload it is an accident waiting to happen. Short stroke it and the gun is never fully "in battery" and cannot be fired.

I have no set plan. For the full magazine 26” barrel levers I try to keep them half full,
I like the weight forward.
I liked the trapper magazine full until I installed the forward mount scope.
Unloading is off topic but if you missed this thread it was interesting. We had a good conversation and on Marlin Owners someone put up a video of unloading through the gate using his thumb.
I have always short cycled.
Uloading through the gate

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slim

I've always loaded my magazines full, I guess I've never had one with hard spring pressure on the last round. A friend and I were gopher shooting a few years ago on the back roads along the Bridger Mountains. He kept opening the action part way on his Win. lever in .22 mag. to check if he had an empty still in it or not. It was starting to make me nervous and I was just about to say something to him when he closed the lever with his finger on the trigger and let one go into the floorboard of my new Dakota. Last year his nephew was sitting in the back seat of his extended cab and blew a hole into the side of the truck with a Marlin .35 Rem. Even the most experienced of us will have an AD at one point, I had one when I was 17 (fortunately it was pointed at the floor) and have been way more careful in the 38 years since. A year later in the Army I was shot in the leg by someone racking his sidearm in a vehicle. Always be aware where the muzzle is pointing. When a rookie is handling a weapon, watch them like a hawk, almost without fail they will swing it towards someone even if briefly. Nobody should be loading/unloading inside the vehicle, at all.

I also replaced the useless cross bolt safety on my Guide Gun with a kit that looks like a screw head.

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- A Man Without A Cross -