The popularity of the lever action design among sporting shooters isn't an exception to this rule: the Army had reluctantly begun using the lever action Spencer rifle and the Henry in limited quantities during the Civil War. Some shooters were thus introduced to repeating guns firing fixed ammunition, with their attendant advantages, through military service. When these men formed part of the mass westward expansion after the War, they readily recognized that repeaters, especially the Henry-derived rifles like the Model 1866 Winchester, were ideal for Indian fighting. The Army stubbornly clung to the single-shot Trapdoor as general issue during the Indian Wars, but many Army personnel used repeaters, buying them out of their own funds.

Civilians moving West accepted the Winchesters readily. Hence the reputation these have as "the guns that won the West," when in fact probably more Sharps and Trapdoors were used on the frontier than any other firearms. Right alongside the various rifles were uncounted numbers of cheap shotguns, mainly imported from Belgium. By the time the Winchester Model 1894 was introduced, the West had largely been "won" and the frontier officially declared "closed" by the government.