RETURN OF THE '66

[Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Wow. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] might strike gold, might make a pile, might come back. A rich man, you're going just like me and you know it. It's for the hunting, ain't it? You hear the stories. Buffalo, Millions, analopee, deer, and they say up in those Rocky Mountains there's wild goats and wild sheep and grizzly bar. There's lots of people going out west, Dunk. And they got to eat. And I sure like to [Music] hunt. Thousands of pioneers, old and young, girls and women, too, upped stakes and took the trails to the west in the 1860s. and for thousands upon thousands of different reasons. Yet they all had these things in common. A wilderness to face, its danger and its mystery, the fear, the hope and the challenge. And they had a rifle, a new rifle. Today, we would call it a scientific breakthrough. It was the first really practical repeater, the Winchester 66, patterned after the wartime Henry rifle. You can load it on Sunday and the dang thing shoots all week, the saying went. It had a bright brass receiver that glowed like soft gold. And the Indians called it yellow boy. It operated with a lever. The carbine held 13 shots at a loading. The rifle 16. Compared to the old singleshot rifles, Yellow Boy made one man as strong as a company of soldiers. It became a part of the west, a part of the America that never can be forgotten. Engines, get them, boy. Get him. [Music] [Music] Heat up here. [Music] The army never officially adopted the Winchester 66, but the Indian did. In 1876, a relative handful of yellow boys bought from traders, captured in raids, aimed by sitting bulls braves, did as much as anything to make the Battle of the Little Bigghorn Kuster's last stand. [Music] Through the passing years, before steel rails and barbed wire caged the West, and as the Indian was losing his battle with history, Winchester became not merely the trade name of a New Haven, Connecticut manufacturer, but the dictionary word for repeating rifle. It was this gun with a lever action in the great capacity that fed the people before the buffalo trails disappeared beneath the vast fields of wheat, before the plow broke the plains. It was the gun of the hunter of the lonely lands. No one, said Theodore Roosevelt, but he who has partaken thereof can understand the keen delight of hunting in lonely lands. For him the joy of the horse wellridden and the rifle well held. The long days of hardship resolutely endured and crowned at the end with triumph. A new Winchester in 1873 did nothing to decrease that triumph and delight. Prong horns. Ain't they beauties? And you gawking. And the meanwhile, the critters got our cartridges counted, learned our horses names, and are scooting. Get your old Winchester up. We got us a chase. Yellow. By the time Winchester's Model 76 came out, towns had sprung up amid the bleaching buffalo bones, and some men who had come west were going back home to grow old with their memories. I sure hate to see you go, there's still so much country I got to see before they get all the dang fences up. I know, boy. I know. Well, write me a letter, huh? Sure, Uncle Shore. You know [Music] me. Hey young, see the new Winchester calendar? Could be me chasing wolves away from the cows. Heading for tall timber now. Lots of mountain line up there. Told you I'd right. Took a few years. This is hunter's paradise, hunk. As the man says, you'd go wild up here. You know what Teddy Roosevelt wrote in that article? Big horn sheep's the hardest kind of hunting. The noblest form of sport with a rifle. And I can now tell you he's right as rain. This here's an animal. Just take a half pine bottle. I bet you got one somewhere. and blow across it. Don't that sound like the old bull elk? Remember how we used to trek in the snow till our lungs about to give out and then we'd hear that old elk feller? I got those new repeating shotguns you sent. You might know Winchester' be the first with those. So that's how you're taking care of your rumat, eh? Sitting in a duck blind. [Music] Well, oldtimer, about time your favorite nephew come back for a good long visit. Just soon as I take one more trip, up north this time, Alaska's opening up and I want to see it. Just a peek. I know I ain't as surprised I used to be myself, Unk, but I don't reckon them wolves up there is carrying Winchesterers yet. After Alaska, we'll go over all those good old days together. So hang on, oldtimer. [Music] The old hunters were passing away, but some, like Buffalo Bill, spread the Winchester name around the world, demonstrating their amazing shooting skills. Ad Topperwine and his wife Plinkcky were among the greatest of the exhibition shooters. Back in 196, AD spent 10 straight 8-hour days shooting a Winchester 22 caliber rifle at 2-in blocks thrown into the air. 72,500 of them. He missed just nine times. And who will ever forget the late Herb Parsons, another Winchester man whose name, voice, and amazing marksmanship were known to millions who saw him in person and in the movies. [Applause] using the 351. Let's try another crew. Let's try big [Applause] [Music] arms. [Music] Illustrating the coordination of fing and I working together which is a situ and a good shot. Toss the stick between the legs. Pick up the gun. Turn around and break that egg before you see the gun. What's the move? Sir and would you like to stay true in slow motion? Okay, let's do it. [Music] Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. At this time, may I do a shot for you that's never been accomplished by any other gun but the Model 12 repeater. I have here seven clay targets, tossing these seven clay targets, breaking each target with a separate shot before they hit the ground. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 [Music] Okay, here they go. Men like Herb Parsons set high standards of skill for all those who have never let the keen delight of hunting in lonely lands die in their hearts. Wherever they go, near at home or far away, they still find the old excitement, the weight, the clean, sharp edge of anticipation, the hardship resolutely [Music] endured. Some may find their lonely lands in a bouncing duck blind off the main coast, a biting wind in their faces. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Some seek that sweet hardship resolutely endured in the wet labor of floating aundred or more decoys in hopes of attracting the canvas backs of the Great Lakes. Others seek out the speedy malard in secluded woodland ponds. A perfect shot, their crown of [Music] triumph. Those who love the autumn sports often find companionship of their own kind, waiting in the corn fields of Maryland, as perhaps their fathers did or their father's fathers, as the Indian did, waiting with net and bow. Generation after generation waiting as the birds passed overhead. The birds are reminders of the past. The guns are modern. The act of skill is the link between past and present. The dogs. The dogs are an important part of it. Not just for what they do, but how they do it. [Music] Heat. Heat. In the smoky airs of autumn, son learns from father and often father learns from son. But this is not a school. It's a companionship, an enrichment of each other's spirit. In the century since the first Winchester 66 appeared, the ladies have usually left the sport to the men. Today, it's different. Many find that this is not only a way to share family pleasure, but that they enjoy the skill for itself. So, if they can vote, why can't they shoot? They do. [Music] The big eared mu deer seen on Winchester's 1912 calendar are the same the pioneers found as they tked west. Today the number of hunters has grown to the millions. Yet the mule deer and the white-tailed deer are more numerous in most sections of the country than they've ever been in history. For the sportsman in the past hundred years has become a conservationist. When a species is endangered, he works to save it through his clubs, through public agencies, and often with the help and encouragement of Olan's conservation department. Thus, the animals flourish and after generations are still here to provide the immemorial challenge to the heart of the hunter. [Music] The prongghorn antelopee was saved from extinction by coyotes through the efforts of a roused sportsman. This beautiful animal, which exists only in western North America, is managed as a crop, as are most game animals today. Hunting is used to keep the size of the herds down to the limits the natural food supply can support. Controlled hunting is the harvest that prevents overpopulation and conserves the herd. Well-fed, strong, able to face its main enemies, the predators, and the winter weather. [Music] Ah, heat. [Music] Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] Teddy Roosevelt wrote in the 19th century. In the 20th century, they still do. Old Ephraim, they used to call him, and sometimes moccasin Joe for his queer halfhuman footprints. The scent of danger, a moment of fear. That's part of the sport, too. Old Ephraim and Marcus and Joe [Music] too. This big fellow had his own history, his own scars, his weapons. The greatest trophies, of course, are the memories, the tight fingers on the heart, the cold air in the lungs, the moments of disappointment as well as triumph. We camped by little pools, wrote the wilderness hunter, who would be president of the United States. The nights were frosty and the days cool and pleasant, so that we slept well and ate well and felt the beat of hardy life in our veins. It's a tradition which has not been lost on succeeding generations. The population grows. Space is said to be growing smaller, but the number of campers and plinkers grows every year. In addition, hundreds of thousands of sportsmen carry on the American tradition in other ways. In trap or ski, it's the marvelous coordination of hand and eye, the split second of judgment, the skill of doing it again and again, the self-control. For others, it's the slow deliberation, the concentration, the complete bodily control, every muscle that target shooting competition demands and rewards. [Applause] [Music] Targets, hand and eye, tin duck, sheet metal rabbit, moving slots in a whirling world, all abstract images of distant adventure. The old 22 chained to the counter at Coney Island really shoots a dream into a wilderness where forever dream and the jet airplane land wherever there are the wonders of the world, not just coldly called game animals, but the creatures with whom the sportsman shares his universe. [Music] Birds that fly almost impossibly high for the shotgun. Modern guns that reach way up there to bring them down. You don't always shoot. Sometimes you just want to [Music] remember. But for those who want it, wait for it, go to it, the most dangerous game in the world. The Cape Buffalo is just as apt to hunt the hunter. And the odds are almost even. Wounded, they shift in favor of the buffalo. Here, when the hunt is successful, the triumph is public. This American's tradition of marksmanship began in the New World Wilderness. Today, the Cape Buffalo, 1966. Yesterday, the American Bison, [Music] 1866. This is when it all began. When Yellow Boy, the first practical repeating rifle, founded the Winchester tradition that in a century has gone round the world. A new Winchester 66 now commemorates that century. A centennial 66. A modern gun fit to begin a new century, but with the soft golden glow of Yellow Boy and the octagonal barrel of the 1866 rifle as readers of the past. The return of the 66 will be an enduring reminder for sportsmen of the old wilderness, the great wealth of creatures that populated it. And the men, the women, the pioneers, the settlers, the red men who for more than a hundred years shared each other's universe while the turbulent westward movement unfolded. [Music] In the words of Theodore Roosevelt, "There shall come forever to his mind the memory of endless prairies shimmering in the bright sun, snowclad wastess lying desolate under gray skies, of melancholy marshes, the rush of mighty rivers, of all the innumerable sights and sounds of the wilderness, of its immensity and mystery, and and of the silences that brewed in its still depths. Winchester dedicates itself not only to the past century with all of its history, but to the new one to come, to all the creatures that still abound and to the sportsmen and conservationists who enjoy them so deeply and who help preserve them for the generations to come. [Music] Things have not changed so much. The lonely lands of the past can still be found in their pristine beauty. Still throwing down their challenge to the man with a gun. The man who hunts the wild free animal and finds freedom for himself. Heat. Heat.