They Brought a Lever Action to a Precision Rifle Class
Here's what happened when TA Targets took the Henry SPD Predator to a Haley Strategic D5 course
They Brought a Lever Action to a Precision Rifle Class. Here’s What Happened.
The Henry SPD PREDATOR was built with a specific claim attached to it: the most accurate lever-action rifle ever built, backed by a factory 3-shot sub-MOA guarantee. Claims are easy. Proof takes range time.
The team at TA Targets decided to put that proof on record. They took the SPD PREDATOR in .223/5.56 through a five-day Haley Strategic D5 Precision Rifle course, one of the most demanding training environments in the country.
Watch what they found.
I Brought a 223 Henry Lever Gun to a Five Day Sniper Class
A Lever Gun in a Precision Class
The D5 course isn’t a casual range day. It’s a structured, high-volume training environment designed to expose every weakness in your rifle and your technique. The shooters who attend typically show up with purpose-built precision bolt guns. The TA Targets crew showed up with a Henry lever action.
Before the class started, they ran a proper 200-round barrel break-in with 55gr PMC Bronze, cleaning between strings and keeping heat out of the barrel. After that process, the rifle picked up 80 fps in velocity, and the already impressive groups started doing something worth talking about: by day two of the D5 class, the SPD PREDATOR was putting 12 rounds into a 3/8″ group at 100 yards.
That’s not a lever gun being given a pass for being interesting. That’s a precision result for any platform, full stop.
What the SPD PREDATOR Is Built to Do
The SPD PREDATOR comes from Henry’s Special Products Division, the same team that produced the HUSH Series and CRUSR. The name is an acronym that describes the mission: Precision Rifle Engineered for Dispatching Agile Targets Over Range.
The rifle is built around a carbon fiber-wrapped 416R stainless match-grade barrel, a factory-tuned and user-adjustable 4-pound trigger with a clean break, a gray laminate stock with an adjustable comb, a Picatinny rail for optic mounting, and a Harris S-LM bipod that ships with the rifle. It takes MSR-style magazines, the same mags most precision-minded shooters already run. The receiver is aerospace-grade aluminum, black anodized, and built on the same award-winning architecture as the Lever Action Supreme Rifle, named Guns & Ammo’s 2025 Rifle of the Year.
Every SPD PREDATOR is designed, engineered, and built in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, and individually inspected before it ships.
The Right Tool for the Job
The SPD PREDATOR was designed for predator and varmint hunters: open country, longer distances, fast-moving targets that don’t offer a second look. Coyotes cutting across a field. Foxes moving through cover. Targets that require precision and a fast follow-up shot, not just one or the other.
What the TA Targets video demonstrates is that this rifle does something rarer than being accurate. It’s accurate under pressure, with volume, in conditions where it has to perform consistently. That matters whether you’re in a training environment or a field where the shot window closes in a second.
The Henry SPD PREDATOR is available now.
TA Targets produces AR550 steel target systems, silhouette cardboard targets, and shooting accessories for range training and competitive use. Learn more at tatargets.com.
