First Look: Remington Core-Lokt Lever Gun Ammunition
BY Herschel Smith
1 month, 3 weeks ago
Remington Ammunition is expanding its Core-Lokt Tipped ammunition line to cover lever-action rifles and carbines with the new Remington Core-Lokt Tipped Lever Gun product line.
“Big Green is excited to be bringing the Core-Lokt Tipped family into the world of lever guns,” said Jon Langenfeld, research and development engineer at Remington Ammunition. “The resurgence of the lever gun was a welcome sight within Remington. We knew it would only be right to allow every lever-gun shooter, whether novice or expert, the ability to utilize the trusted performance of Remington’s Core-Lokt Tipped in a variety of lever-gun calibers.”
Most lever-action firearms use a tubular magazine, which places cartridges in front and behind each other in the magazine. For safety reasons, lever gun calibers are not loaded with pointed, spitzer-type bullets due to potential danger of a bullet’s point sitting right behind the next round’s primer, which may result in an accidental discharge. Blunt-nosed bullets are used in these magazines to prevent this, but the trade-off has always been less efficient ballistic performance, especially at longer distances.
All Remington Core-Lokt Tipped Lever Gun bullets use a green polymer ballistic tip which reduces each bullet’s “blunt” profile to boost its ballistic performance in a way that’s safe for the inside a lever-action firearm’s tubular magazine. However, the Core-Lokt bullets still expand into their classic “mushroom” shape to stop game.
It’s about time. I’m surprised it took them this long. Here is list of bullet weights and muzzle velocities.
- .360 Buckhammer, 180 grain: Muzzle velocity 2,400 fps
- .30-30 Win., 150 grain: Muzzle velocity 2,390 fps
- .35 Rem., 200 grain: Muzzle velocity 2,080 fps
- .45-70 Gov’t, 300 grain: Muzzle velocity 1,900 fps
- .444 Marlin, 240 grain: Muzzle velocity 2,350 fps
- .32 Win. Special, 170 grain: Muzzle velocity 2,250 fps
This is a little disappointing. To be quite honest, I’m not sure why they’re not loading them hotter than this. Picking up a box of .444 Marlin jacketed flat nose by Hornady, I see it has a bullet weight of 265 grains with a muzzle velocity of 2400 FPS. That’s a heavier bullet moving slightly faster than the Remington bullet. But then, the Core-Lokt cartridges have always been a bit slower than the competition. It’s the expansion guys love, and too much velocity can actually hurt the ballistics by “penciling” through the game. We’d have to see a gel test to quantify the difference between these manufacturers.
There’s also the issue of sighting in your rifle. The sight-in procedure is good for only a single bullet weight, and so if you’re testing ammunition from a different manufacturer, while the point of impact during testing won’t matter, the final ammunition choice will require sighting in the rifle with whatever you choose.
As to the issue brought up a few days ago by a reader, I still see very high usefulness and viability of the lever action rifle. As I’ve said, this .444 Marlin round will easily put down hogs with a single shot without any movement at all after impact (I’ve seen lesser rounds take longer to accomplish the job).
Also, there’s the issue of cool factor. Lever action guns are just cool to own and shoot, and a .444 Marlin or 45-70 doesn’t exactly go into an AR pattern rifle (it’s short action, including the AR-10s).
I think the lever gun will be around long after I’m gone, as it should be. Every American boy should own a lever gun, or several.
On March 2, 2025 at 11:38 pm, Latigo Morgan said:
They’re going to have to really bring their A game to top Hornady’s Lever Evolution stuff, especially in .30-30 where the ammo gives you another 100 yards of effective range.
On March 3, 2025 at 1:14 am, Georgiaboy61 said:
Re: “I think the lever gun will be around long after I’m gone, as it should be. Every American boy should own a lever gun, or several.”
I’ll second that… lever-action rifles are just plain fun, and they’re an integral part of our history as a nation. Not only did they help “tame the West,” but they’ve put a lot of venison in freezers for a very long time.
Lever-action “cowboy” guns – carbines and rifles – are not only great for boys, they’re good for girls and women, too. Not because they are any less “manly,” but because they are easy to learn and less-intimidating to new or inexperienced shooters. For many of us, a lever-action .22 rifle was one of the very first we owned.
And after a year or two of a .22-cal. lever action under his belt, that growing boy may be ready for his first bolt-action or maybe a 30-30 or some other more-potent center-fire caliber.
Lever-actions earned their keep in frontier days by offering improved performance relative to existing designs of long guns. The saying went, “Load it on Sunday and shoot it all week!” – a reference to the greater capacity of many of these rifles than older types. They were light, handy and compact, and swift to shoulder – and the best lever-guns point almost as well as a fine shotgun.
The design also lends itself well to riding and being on horseback, and being stored in a scabbard on the saddle. Around the 1890s when the first bolt-actions were used by cavalry, it was found that they didn’t handle or store as easily as lever-actions had.
Large-scale military use of lever-action rifles ended for the most part with the 20th century, but the Czar’s Imperial Army used some Winchester M1895 lever-actions chambered in 7.62x54R for a time during WWI circa 1915-1917, when Mosin-Nagant production was insufficient to meet their needs. How cool is that?
Gun writers of one sort or another have been trying to bury the 30-30 lever-action as a viable hunting rifle for the 21st century, calling it obsolete and saying that its time has passed. But the lever-action skeptics don’t get it: Grandpa’s old Winchester, Marlin or Henry 30-30 persists because it gets passed as a family heirloom from father to son and generation-to-generation. It is enough gun and enough cartridge to do what many hunters need, a classic example of not letting perfect be the enemy of the good. With the possible exception of the .303 British and the Lee-Enfield rifle up in Canada, it has put more meat in the freezer than any other cartridge or type of rifle.
On March 3, 2025 at 6:45 am, jrg said:
Agree with the lever gun ‘cool’ factor. Long ago, I had a Marlin .444 with Lyman receiver mounted peep sight. It was fun to shoot but a bit more expensive to find, even back then. When an Uncle asked me what it was for, I told him its basically a .44 caliber 30-30. And he instantly smiled – just a bit more smack on the animal.
I had to sell it a bit over 30 years ago. We were building our house and I wanted commercial grade steel doors – hardware and those are not inexpensive. That Marlin and a Winchester 670 .30-06 were sold to help with the costs of them.
I still hunt occasionally with a Savage 99T carbine, it chambered in .250 Savage. It is a great gun. Ammunition for it is hard to find and when it is, pretty expensive. Most of my rifles shoot the Remington green – yellow box very well.
Thank you for your post on new ammunitions. Is it too hard to ask for $10 for a box of 20 rounds again ? :^)
On March 3, 2025 at 6:07 pm, Grunt said:
What Latigo says. Lever Revolution has been around a long time. Welcome to the past Remington.
On March 3, 2025 at 7:40 pm, Thomas said:
I have a Henry Carbine in .357 Mag.
Is this new Core-Lokt intended for my rifle, or is there a better choice in .357?
On March 3, 2025 at 8:20 pm, Herschel Smith said:
@Thomas,
I don’t see .357 magnum on the list, but then the list may not be all-inclusive.
Hornady makes Lever Evolution. Or otherwise, jacketed flat nose by any one of several manufacturers (I’d recommend starting with Double Tap, Underwood or Buffalo Bore).
On March 3, 2025 at 8:35 pm, UH1H CE said:
Darn! I keep hoping that somebody will breath some life back into my .450 Marlin. I bought that gem when they were hot and new, now even Marlin has abandoned them.
On a recent hog hunt, I was the only man who put a pig down in one shot. The .450 Bushmaster, the 30.06, the 6.5 Creedmore, and the .300 WinMag all required second shots. I guess that if I get through the last 87 cartridges in my inventory, I’ll just have to hand load.
On March 3, 2025 at 9:28 pm, Larry said:
There is at least one exception to tubular magazines and spitzer bullets: the French Lebel 1886. It originally used round-nosed bullets, but in 1901, the Balle D was adopted. The rather extreme taper of the French rimmed made it somewhat impractical for a box magazine, and for when it first appeared, a tubular magazine was good enough. When the pointed Balle D came into service, the case head had a circular groove around the primer to ‘catch’ the point of the spitzer bullet. Between the fully rimmed case, the taper, and primer-protecting groove, the Lebel’s bullets all pointed somewhat downwards in the magazine tube. In 1915, an additional convex primer protector was pressed on over the primer, no doubt due to a series of unfortunate events in combat and/or training. Not a great solution, so it went away almost as soon as WWI was over for sure.
On March 3, 2025 at 9:29 pm, Larry said:
My apologies for mangling the closing tag. Sorry about that!
On March 3, 2025 at 9:40 pm, Ozark Redneck said:
I love the lever actions! @Thomas, I have a 357 Marlin lever action, Buffalo Bore makes a ‘Heavy 357 MAG Outdoorsman’ load in 180gr hard cast, that is a hog killer. Check it out.
On March 4, 2025 at 1:04 am, Georgiaboy61 said:
For those hunters who want a wider choice of cartridges in their lever-action rifle, consider spending the money for a Browning BLR, the very fine lever-action which loads from a box magazine. Few lever-action manufacturers offer their rifles and carbines in time-honored hunting cartridges like .270 Winchester, 30-06, .308 and .243, to name a few – but Browning does.
They’re not cheap, but the workmanship and materials on every example I have been fortunate-enough to handle have been exemplary. And they’re beautifully-done, too, a pleasure to look at. I would love to get one chambered in 7mm Rem-Mag.
On March 4, 2025 at 6:13 am, jrg said:
Adding another modern chambered lever action to Georgiaboy61 list – the Henry Long Ranger lever rifle. And the long discontinued but excellent Savage 99. Both of these having internal magazines with stacked cartridges.
On March 4, 2025 at 6:08 pm, Larry said:
There was one tubular-magazined rifle that (eventually) used spitzer bullets, the Lebel 8mm of 1886 that after 1901 was issued with Balle D spitzer ammunition that due to its extreme taper and fully rimmed base tended to point downwards in the tube, aided by a groove in the baseplate to ‘catch’ the point of the bullet. That wasn’t entirely satisfactory in the field because in 1915 a small convex primer cover was pressed on during manufacture, no doubt due to some shells going off in the tube?
On March 5, 2025 at 7:50 am, jrg said:
A long time ago (100 years ?), Remington pump action rifles had a spiral shaped magazine tube under the barrel. This was supposed to cant the stacked bullet so that the bullet nose – primer did not line up.
On March 6, 2025 at 9:07 pm, Thomas said:
Thanks, Hershal and Ozark.
I’ll look into those options.
Thomas