Bought a Winchester XTR 308 made in 1980 yesterday. Oddly (to me) the rifle has a blind magazine but the rifle was in super shape and the price was right so I couldn’t pass it up. Tried researching it and not finding much online, it appears to be a 70A model that Winchester brought out briefly to compete with the Remington ADL…or so the story goes. Seems it has everything a regular 70XTR has, just Winchester saved a few bucks by using the blind magazine and slightly lower MSRP. Anyone have one of these rifles or know much about them?

I’ve got other rifles with a blind magazine (Savage, Remington, etc) and never really thought about which is better blind or floorplate, I do though however think it is weird seeing a Winchester 70 without that floorplate! I guess if it bothers me bad enough I can always covert it, but for the price of a new stock and bottom metal I can get over my “that just don’t look right” feeling lol.

I have a 1970’s Win Mod 70 in 243 with no floor plate. It is not a XTR though. The old rifle is still a good shooter, many a deer have fallen in front of it.

I assumed they all had the floor plate. I have a couple of pre64s and a couple others and they all do.

One thing about not having a floorplate---you can't accidentally pop it open and dump your ammo all over creation.

My 50 yr old M70 got to where it had a little issue with the floor plate not opening or closing just exactly right.
JG messed with it and I think it’s fixed.

I hear Jason's pretty handy with a welder.

I think it was closer to a finger nail file…

I've got a similar one in .25-06. It is a great shooter and the blind mag has never really bothered me. Only thing is that It is a little more inconvenient to unload, but that isn't much of a gripe.

Does it have a lightweight contour barrel? There was a gun distributor in Utah that had these rifles made in 30'06, 308 and 300 Win mag. I ran across one in 30'06 30yrs ago and after a call to the Winchester historian, that was the information I was given.

Hi David, that is something I did not consider, a special run or rifles made for a distributor.

Pretty sure it is a sporter barrel, I am on the road for the next two weeks but I asked the missus to measure the muzzle, she said it was .605. It it probably really .600

She’s a keeper. Mine would of used a ruler and said “it’s less than that, is that close enough?).

LOL


Well full disclosure Freerange, I walked her through using the calipers. If I hadn’t, she probably would have just sent me a picture of the muzzle and said “can you measure it from the picture?”