Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Here we have a really neat one-off design that I had never heard of. This is the Universal Firearms Model Vulcan 440 pump action carbine in 44 Magnum. It was kind of difficult to find information on these so bear with me (look up pictures too, they are unique-looking guns). The Universal Firearms Model Vulcan 440 pump action carbine seems to have popped up around 1963. The advertisement that is our Photo of the Day is a cut out from Shotgun News on October 15, 1963. Crazy these guns were $99.95 then because $100 in 1963 had the purchasing power of roughly $977.68 in 2023. From the chamber area and back the gun was based on an M1 Carbine. This was by no means a direct competitor to the undoubtedly cheaper surplus service rifles but it offered more foot-pounds of energy so it was a more desirable hunting rifle. At least it was thought to be. These guns did not sell well. I have seen production numbers vary but they all average around 1500.
