Henry Lever Action Supreme, Review and Test

The Henry Lever Action Supreme is a unique design that moved from concept to production in fewer than three years — a remarkably quick journey for a new gun. Despite that speedy process, nothing about the rifle feels rushed or poorly thought out. On the contrary, this slick .223 is well executed and I’d be shocked if it doesn’t become a big hit.

The gist of the rifle is that it runs off AR-15 style magazines and has some interesting new features — like a user adjustable trigger and an innovative rear sight. But still waters run deep, as they say, and there’s a lot going on under the surface with the Henry Lever Action Supreme that makes it so appealing and distinguishes it from previous magazine-fed models like Henry’s Long Ranger.

The rifle is simple and intuitive to operate, has an uncluttered aesthetic, and runs very smoothly. It’s also accurate, especially for a lever gun. To achieve this, Henry started with a blank sheet of paper to create a new design. Nothing in the Lever Action Supreme is borrowed from Henry’s other offerings. Approaching this rifle with fresh eyes is how the company created this little jewel.

Henry Lever Action Supreme Specs

• Action: Lever action with rotating AR-style bolt head
• Stock: Walnut
• Cartridge: .223 Rem. / 5.56 NATO (tested), .300 Blackout
• Capacity: 10
• Weight: 6 pounds, 6 ounces (measured)
• Trigger: User adjustable, 3 pounds, 3 ounces (measured)
• Barrel: 18 inches, 1:8 twist, threaded ½-28
• Length: 38 ¼ inches
• Price: $1,299

Key Features

• Runs with AR-style magazines
• Free-floated barrel
• Tang safety
• Versatile rear sight
• Trigger adjusts from 3 to 6 pounds
• Also available in .300 Blackout

Lever Action Supreme Accuracy

Of the four loads I tested in the rifle, it liked Federal 77-grain Centerstrike and Sierras 77-grain SMKs the best. The 5-shot group average for both loads was under one inch, while the 20-shot aggregates for those loads was right around 1.5 inches. The mean radius with the Federal 77-grainers was .40 inches while the MR with the Sierra 77s was .46 inches. Both are good for a rifle of this type.

For a deeper understanding these figures, check out this story on using 20-shots to zero a rifle and measure precision, and this story on mean radius, which explains the value of that metric. Using Outdoor Life’s E.A.T.S. targets simplifies gathering this data.

Operating the Henry Lever Action Supreme

Getting this rifle up and running couldn’t be simpler. Just stuff some .223 ammo in the 10-round polymer P-Mag that comes standard, seat the magazine, cycle the lever, and you’re ready to go. As you pull the gun up, push the safety on the tang forward and let ’er rip.

For a modern gun, the Lever Action Supreme has remarkably few controls. There’s the safety, the magazine catch, and the lever loop. That’s it.

The hammer is enclosed within the receiver, so you never come in contact with it. The safety sits right under the shooter’s thumb on the tang, meaning it works for righties and lefties equally well. And it clicks back and forth in such a positive manner that it would be impossible to mess up, even when the whitetail of your dreams steps into the open and buck fever takes hold.

I conjure that scenario from experience, by the way. I’ve shot Marlin lever actions as long as I’ve been hunting, and I still remember that November morning in a tamarack swamp in Northern Michigan when I locked eyes with a heavy eight-pointer. I thumbed back the hammer on my 336C, pulled the trigger, and heard the loudest click of my life. I’d forgotten to take the crossbolt safety off, as so many others have done. The deer bounded off, busting through reeds and skim ice, and I never saw him again.

The Henry Lever Action Supreme guards against that mishap. There’s no external hammer to cock, and when the safety is on, the trigger cannot be pulled.

Henry’s Dual Safeties

Like so many things about this rifle, the safety is rather clever. There’s the manual tang safety, which I just described. But there’s also a lever block safety that prevents the gun from shooting when the lever opens. As soon as the lever moves out of battery, a spring-loaded hook engages the trigger, securing it in place and preventing it from moving.

That hook also engages the trigger when the tang safety is on safe. The only time the spring on the hook relaxes, allowing the trigger to be fired, is when the safety is forward and the lever is fully closed.

Sights for the Henry Lever Action Supreme

As soon as I took delivery of the rifle I knew what I wanted to mount on it. I had received an early sample of Vortex’s new Viper Red Dot, and that sight fairly begged to be mounted on a lever-action carbine like the Henry.

As with other Henry rifles (and many other lever actions) the top of the receiver is tapped with four holes should the shooter want to use something other than the rifle’s iron sights. The universal design of the Vortex let me attach it to the Lever Action Supreme with four fasteners, for a solid connection. (The Vortex is designed to work with just two screws holding it down. If the spacing on the receiver allows, three screws are better, and four is best.)

The Viper Red Dot sat low on the receiver and worked great with the gun’s stock geometry, which is optimized for the open sights. This allowed for a good cheek weld, creating a solid connection between my face and the gun, and let me run the gun very fast when transitioning between targets.

Red Dot and Lever Action: An Ideal Combo

This was my favorite way to configure the gun, which I ran with a Banish Speed-K Ti suppressor attached. The rifle pointed like a boss, creating tight clusters of impacts on the heads of 2/3 IPSC targets at distances between 25 and 50 yards while shooting off hand.

The rifle’s crisp trigger and smooth cycling let me get a lot of accurate shots off quickly, and I think this setup would make a great whitetail rifle for shots inside 100 yards.

While doing this dynamic high-volume shooting — don’t dare accuse me of mag dumps — I tried the rifle with many styles of magazines. Everything from sedate 5-round polymer mags to Surefire’s 60-round triple-stack badness.

I found that every type of polymer magazine — particularly Magpuls — worked flawlessly. And, while most metal mags ran fine, some caused a slight hitch when trying to pick up a new round. This is entirely due to the inconsistent dimensions of AR magazines, and in no way reflects poorly on the rifle.

This is why Henry ships the rifle with a 10-round P-Mag. Should you want to use other magazines you have lying around, you’ll want to test them out first.

Innovative Open Sights

If you want to shoot old-school style, the rifle comes with effective open sights. The front post is shaped like a steep sided pyramid with a flat top. The notch on the rear sight is the negative of this and looks like a dovetail cut. That geometry is a bit unusual but it works.

The rear sight is a new design that has a pending patent, according to Henry. It adjusts for windage and elevation with two screws, but if you look closely you’ll see two smaller openings that contain set screws that let you lock the sight’s position in place.

On top of that the rear sight inset is replaceable. Meaning you can swap the dovetail design for other shapes or even a peep sight. Henry hasn’t produced those other insets yet, but they are in the works.

Variable Power Scope for Accuracy

The rifle works well with scopes, too, which are easy to mount once you get the Picatinny rail Henry sells for this purpose.

To get a feel for the rifle’s precision at 100 yards, I topped it with the GPO Centuri 4-16x44i C. It’s a compact first-focal plane scope with good glass and a straightforward, useful, illuminating mil-based reticle. It offers a lot of value for its $630 price tag. Like the rifle, the scope is pint sized, and they make a fine pair.

For someone wanting to stretch the legs on the Lever Action Supreme a scope like this is a good option, though the best all-around optic for many shooters would be an LPVO. Something with a base 1X magnification that can be cranked to 4X or 6X would complement the Henry.

I shot the rifle at 100 yards, gathering 20-shot groups (aggregated from individual 5-shot groups), with three different types of ammo. For comparison, I shot the same ammo (at the same time) through a precision rifle I built on a Zermatt TL3 action, Manners TCH stock, and Proof Steel Competition Contour Pre-Fit.

As you can see, while the competition rifle outshot the lever action (which is to be expected), the Henry really held its own. Though it didn’t care for the 55-grain Nosler Varmageddon, it did quite well with the Federal 77-grain Centerstrike and Sierra 77-grain Match Kings both of which averaged under one inch with five-shot groups, while the Barnes 85-grain OTMs — averaging 1.5 inches — is respectable as well.

What Makes the Henry Lever Action Supreme Accurate

Legit Sub-MOA performance from a lever action isn’t the norm. Lever-actions suffer from design constraints that typically make high-level accuracy a difficult, or even impossible, goal. For instance, a lever action with a two-piece stock that bolts on the front and rear of the receiver is less than ideal. It doesn’t take much pressure from the shooter to induce flex into a rifle built that way, which degrades accuracy.

Other common issues that don’t help lever actions achieve good accuracy are barrel bands that attach the fore-end to the barrel, and heavy, inconsistent, triggers.

The Lever Action Supreme works around these issues a couple different ways. First, the barrel is free floated. The front of the receiver has an aluminum extension that the fore-end attaches to, so it has no contact with the barrel itself.

Henry also went to great pains to create a quality trigger that can be adjusted by the user to trip between 3 and 6 pounds.

Even though the rifle uses AR-style components in its bolt system (more on that later), the trigger is nothing like an AR trigger. It is its own design, and a good one at that. It breaks in a crisp and consistent manner with the barest amount of creep that’s nearly imperceptible unless you’re really looking for it.

To adjust the pull weight, you use the small hex tool that Henry provided. It goes into the face of the trigger and lets you set the trigger wherever you like between 3 and 6 pounds. That small hex tool is what you also use to loosen the set screws that secure the rear sight.

What Makes the Henry Lever Action Supreme Smooth

The rifle is one of the smoothest I’ve ever shot. Some rimfires are its equal, but very few lever actions in high-power calibers are as slick — though the Browning BLR’s come to mind.

Under the guidance of Nick Chappell, Henry’s vice president of engineering, the company’s engineers created a linkage system that beautifully transfers the rotational movement of the lever into the lateral movement of the bolt carrier group.

There are no discernible peaks or valleys in the effort required to cycle the action, and no hiccups in the components that cause them to bind or get sticky. It’s just a smooth, even ride from start to finish.

Rifle Disassembly

To take the rifle apart, you simply drift out the two retaining pins on the receiver. Having done that, you can separate the rear of the stock, which contains the lever, trigger assembly, and bolt assembly, from the front half, consisting of the receiver, barrel, and fore-end.

This allows for easy cleaning from the breech and, because the trigger group and bolt assembly are on the other half of the rifle, there’s no chance solvent or unwanted oil will drip into those bits. This is yet another example of the rifle’s smart design.

I removed the fore-end on my rifle to take pictures showing how it is supported by the receiver keeping it out of contact with the barrel — but Henry does not recommend field stripping the rifle to this degree. The fore-end is press-fit in place and is very tight and the chances are good that anyone attempting to free the fore-end will damage the rifle’s wood finish — or worse.

AR-style Bolt — Sort Of

The Lever Action Supreme uses a rotating AR-style bolt head that is housed in a bolt carrier that looks very much like a traditional AR’s. While the bolt head is identical to what you run in your favorite MSR — though it doesn’t have (or need) gas rings — the carrier is completely different, other than its visual similarity.

The carrier is made from polished 416 stainless steel and retains the firing pin the same way a BCG on an AR does. So, to service it, you remove the cotter pin at the rear of the carrier, which lets the firing pin slide out. At that point you can rotate the cam pin 90 degrees which frees the bolt and lets you remove the cam pin as well.

Anyone who’s ever serviced an AR will be able to accomplish this without any guidance or instructions.

Extraction and Ejection

As with a well-tuned AR, the plunger ejector and M-16 extractor on the Henry Lever Action Supreme worked great. The linkage in the action generated plenty of leverage to pop the case free of the chamber, and the empties spun out of the ejection port with satisfying force. No matter how fast or slow I ran the action I couldn’t induce any type of failure where the spent brass remained in the chamber.

Reloading

At the rear of the magazine well, just in front of the lever loop, is a small magazine release paddle. It is fairly stiff, but not difficult to operate. Pushing forward on the release frees the magazine. Some magazines dropped free on their own — metal ones in particular — but it wasn’t unusual for me to need to grab the polymer magazine and pull them out.

I didn’t mind this because when those magazines are in place they have a snug fit and don’t rattle about — which the undersized metal magazine tended to do.

Henry Lever Action Supreme Aesthetics

I referenced it briefly above, but the Henry’s looks deserve mention. This is a really handsome rifle. The walnut on my sample has some lovely figure in it, and is checkered with fine diamonds that look pleasing and provide good grip.

The Henry rifles I own and have shot typically have very good bluing on the metal and excellent fit and finish. This rifle is no exception.

You can tell when a firearms company takes deep pride in what they produce — their guns just have that little something extra — and that’s the case here.

Final Thoughts

Not many new rifles live up to their billing — or the expectations put on them. It’s common for simple line extensions to be touted as “new” by gun makers, though all they did was add some extra chamberings, or change the stock and barrel length.

On the other hand, it is often the case that truly new rifles suffer from significant growing pains, with glitches that diminish their appeal or, in some cases, lead to their early demise.

This Henry avoids both issues. Though genuinely new and innovative, it runs and handles as well as a beloved classic that’s been around for generations.

I can see this rifle appealing to many types of shooters. It’s a great option for deer hunting from a stand, chasing hogs around, or carrying around in your truck gun for the chance encounter with a coyote. It is also a bit of a stealth assault rifle. Because the action is so slick and the gun handles so well, when loaded with a 20- or 30-round P-Mag it makes for a formidable defensive weapon.

Finally, I see it appealing to the person who likes lever actions, and appreciates a well-crafted rifle where its form, function, and looks were all top priorities.

 

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