Henry’s New Gun Is the Most Unique Lever-Action on the Market

A free-floated barrel promotes accuracy in a platform not known for producing tack drivers. The adjustable trigger offers more flexibility than virtually all other lever actions, and the threaded barrel allows for suppressors and other devices. Even the iron sights are innovative. Henry developed their own trapezoidal rear sight, which when mated with the front blade offers more precision than most iron sight systems.

Is the Lever Action Supreme perfect? No. I have a few gripes about the design, and the $1,300 MSRP will put it out of reach for many hunters. But Henry is pushing the boundaries of the lever-action platform, and for that the Supreme deserves a serious look.

Features and Specs

Caliber: .223 Rem/5.56 NATO

Barrel Length: 18"

Barrel Type: Free-Floated Round Blued Steel

Rate of Twist: 1:8

Overall Length: 38.15"

Weight: 6.65 lbs.

Receiver Finish: Hard Anodized Black

Rear Sight: Fully Adj. Trapezoidal

Front Sight: Blade

Scopeability: Drilled & Tapped

Scope Mount Type: Weaver 63B

Stock Material: Genuine American Walnut

Buttplate/Pad: Rubber Recoil Pad

Length of Pull: 14"

Safety: Tang Safety Switch

Embellishments/Extras: Sling Swivel Studs, Threaded Barrel (1/2x28), Match-Grade Adjustable Trigger, Sight and Trigger Adjustment Tool Included

Other Chamberings: 300 Blackout (16.5-inch barrel)

Uniqueness #1: Mag-Fed

Until you pop open the hood, the Lever Action Supreme doesn’t look much different than any other lever gun–except for one thing. A familiar looking magazine extends from the bottom of the rifle, one that also feeds the most popular long gun in America, the AR-15.

As someone who’s had varying levels of disposable income over the years (shall we say), I’m a big fan of guns that use magazines I already have. Rather than make customers buy expensive, proprietary magazines for the Lever Action Supreme, Henry built a gun around inexpensive, common magazines most people already own. Springfield did something similar by allowing their Model 2020 Rimfire to accept Ruger 10/22 mags, and I hope other gun companies continue this trend.

Practically speaking, this allows users to choose a mag size that fits their needs. The gun comes with a ten-round magazine, which is great for plinking at the range or a successful night of coyote hunting. If you want to reload even less often, you can run a 20- or 30-round mag to tackle a herd of feral hogs or make the Supreme your new home defense firearm.

Of course, as the old saying goes, “live by the detachable mag, die by the detachable mag” (I’m paraphrasing). AR-15 magazines are cheap and easy to find, but if you leave it at home on a day at the range or, heaven forbid, a hunting trip, you’ll be stuck finagling single cartridges into the chamber. There also isn’t a flush-fitting option. Since an AR-15 magazine well extends far below the Supreme’s, even a five-round magazine will protrude below the receiver.

The mag release is located just forward of the trigger guard, and the paddle is ambidextrous. Operating this paddle was one of the only negative experiences I had during the course of my testing. It takes a fair amount of force to depress, and the location is awkward, especially with the lever down (i.e., with the bolt open).

Still, I do appreciate that the Henry engineers avoided adding an ugly button to the side of the firearm. The location of the mag release might not be the most convenient, but it allows the gun to maintain the look and feel of a traditional lever-action. I also liked that the mechanism ejects the mag with force, whether you’re using a polymer or metal mag.

The only other control on the rifle besides the mag release is a rear safety that keeps the trigger from being pulled but allows the action to cycle.

Uniqueness #2: AR Bolt, Redesigned Action

The magazine isn’t the only thing that will remind you of an AR-15. The rifle is easily disassembled by punching out the two retaining pins in the receiver, which lets users view (and clean) the gun’s inner workings.

Among those inner workings is a bolt that's a carbon copy of the bolt used in an AR, minus the gas rings. Like that platform, the bolt rotates to lock and unlock, and the plunger ejector and M-16 extractor do a great job grabbing spent brass and tossing it to the side.

Henry may have copied the AR bolt design, but otherwise, they built this rifle from the bottom up. They didn’t base the action mechanism on any of their previous rifles, which would normally give me pause. New rifles often go through some growing pains as users cause failures and engineers work out the kinks. But Henry has more than a little experience designing lever guns, and in this case I think they nailed it.

The linkage system is smooth. Insanely smooth. You might not notice (I admit, I didn’t) until you compare it to other lever actions. But when you do, it’s obvious. The bolt carrier moves back and forth like butter, and I didn’t run into any feeding or extraction malfunctions. Fast shots are easier with a smooth action, and in that category I’d put the Supreme up against any centerfire lever gun on the market.

Uniqueness #3: Trapezoidal Irons

The action is unique, and so are the irons. In a world of red dots and high-powered scopes, I don’t know of many hunters who were clamoring for a new kind of iron sight. But when Henry says they redesigned everything about this rifle from the ground up, they mean everything.

The iron sights are adjustable for windage and elevation, which is nice but not groundbreaking. But the rear sight is noteworthy because it uses a shape you’ve never seen on a lever gun: a trapezoid.

A trapezoid, for those who skipped or failed geometry (slowly raises hand), is a geometric shape that has at least one pair of parallel sides. The rear sight makes this shape while the front sight resembles a triangle. For reasons beyond my power of explanation, these shapes fit together perfectly. When the sights are aligned, the top of the triangle is parallel with the top of the rear sight while the horizontal line on the front sight is aligned with the bottom of the trapezoid.

Whether you like this system is a matter of personal preference. The only other widely available trapezoidal sight comes courtesy of Styr handguns, and the reviews on those appear to be mixed. Personally, I like it. Something about the way the slim front sight fits neatly within the rear sight makes sense to my brain, and the tip of the triangle offers a more precise point of aim than a squared post.

It’s also worth noting, whether you love or hate or never use the irons, they’re super durable. The front blade is thin, but not so thin that it can’t survive a drop on the concrete. The rear sight is also compact and well-made, and I had no trouble adjusting it with the supplied wrench.

Uniqueness #4: An Actually Decent Trigger

The trigger is another unique feature of the Henry Lever Action Supreme. Despite Henry’s claim that it’s “match grade,” it won’t blow your socks off by bolt-action standards. It definitely has some takeup, and the break is a little mushy. But you can tell Henry is really trying to give users a good trigger, which in my experience, is pretty uncommon for lever guns.

The trigger on the model I received came from the factory set at three pounds, but it is user-adjustable between three and six pounds. I’m sure there must be other lever guns with adjustable triggers, but it’s uncommon enough that I haven’t heard of it. And much like the action, it is one of the best triggers I’ve ever pulled on a lever-action rifle. It’s light at three pounds, and the break is consistent if a little mushy.

Uniqueness #5: New-Look Aesthetics

Loading the rifle, running the action, and pulling the trigger are all great experiences, and those are the things that matter. But if you look closely, you’ll notice that the Supreme doesn’t look like many other lever-action rifles you’ve seen before. It has the wood and steel we know and love, but the outline is bulky in the receiver, the forend, and the stock. At the same time, it uses a thinner profile barrel on the .223 Rem. model that makes the rifle look, somehow, a little too skinny on that end.

This is nitpicking, I know, but I’m on the record as appreciating the aesthetics of the traditional lever-action design. There's something attractive about how the tubular magazine of many lever guns balances the profile of the barrel and the handguard, and the receiver is proportional to the rest of the gun. The Supreme departs from this traditional aesthetic, and these design choices do have practical implications–some good, some bad.

A slim-profile barrel, for instance, helps give the gun an overall weight of six pounds, ten ounces with a non-included picatinny optics rail. Adding a Sig Sauer WHISKEY6 bumps the weight up to eight pounds, five ounces, which is still reasonable for any hunting rifle.

It’s always good to save a little weight, but a slim barrel also heats up quickly, especially with a relatively high-pressure cartridge like the .223 Rem. I allowed the barrel to cool after each three-shot group, so I don’t have any precise data on how much a hot barrel impacts accuracy. But there’s no getting around the fact that heat can make skinny barrels do strange things. It may not be an issue on the rifle you receive, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Uniqueness #6: Accuracy

Lever-action rifles aren’t known for being accurate. Some of that is due to the types of cartridges they commonly fire, but some of that is also due to the design of the rifle itself.

Gunmakers have known for a long time that it’s best to free-float a barrel–meaning, the barrel doesn’t contact the stock or anything else along its length. Most traditional lever action designs do not prioritize this accuracy-inducing feature. Many have two barrel bands that affix the barrel to the forend at one point and to the tubular magazine at another. This makes for inconsistent barrel harmonics as the barrel contacts the stock and the magazine, which itself vibrates differently as it gets heavier and lighter depending on how full it is.

The Lever Action Supreme doesn’t need a tubular magazine, but it also manages to free-float the barrel. Rather than a barrel band, the Supreme affixes the forend to an aluminum extension that protrudes from the receiver. It’s held in place with a screw that can be removed from the front of the forend, so you don’t have to worry about it coming loose. This design ensures that nothing contacts the barrel, which is a big reason the rifle achieves excellent accuracy.

The two-piece stock design still introduces some inconsistencies, and the gun isn’t dead-nuts accurate with every kind of bullet/ammunition. But when you find something it likes, it really likes it. With this rifle, that was the 77-grain open tip match loads from Sig Sauer. Other reviewers have also reported that this gun shoots those heavier bullets exceptionally well, which is good to know if you get your own Lever Action Supreme.

These are the 55-grain varmint bullets.

I shot each type of ammunition–55-grain Varmint and Predator, 60-grain Solid Copper, and 77-grain Open Tip Match–from 100 yards using an MDT bipod and rear bags. I shot five, three-shot groups with each, and you can see the averages and small groups in the table above.

It didn’t shoot any of the bullets badly, but I was really impressed with those 77-grain pills. Velocities were obviously slower than you’d prefer from a .223 Rem., but still plenty fast enough to take a coyote or other varmint. And the group sizes were excellent. I was testing another tailor-made varmint rifle on this same day at the range, and it wasn’t able to shoot those match bullets as well as the Henry. For a lever gun, that’s pretty incredible.

Last Shot

Of course, you don’t buy a lever-action rifle to shoot paper from a bench. Lever guns are designed for quick shots in the field, and that’s where the Supreme shines as well. With a MeatEater Banish suppressor on the end of the rifle, I had a grand ol’ time shooting steel at 200 and 300 yards from various standing and seated positions. The smooth action made quick work of quick shots, and the light trigger helped me make hits even as the reticle danced around the targets.

It may not look like it from the outside, but the Henry Lever Action Supreme is the most unique lever gun on the market–and I mean that in a good way. It’s unlike any other rifle, and those design elements lend themselves to quick, accurate shooting. It’s about as much fun as you can have at the range, and I can’t wait to take it out into the field.