I just acquired a model 70 .270 Win that I believe is a Black Shadow. It looks like all the Black Shadow pictures you can find with a google search and matches the description. The only thing that makes me wonder if I am wrong is that on Winchester's website under the historic product description, it says that the Black Shadow has a hinged floorplate, but mine is a blind magazine.
http://www.winchesterguns.com/products/ ... mid=535021
Is it possible that their own description is wrong or that different versions were made during it's production? All you Black Shadow owners out there, does yours have a floor plate or blind magazine. Is there another model nearly identical?

I called Winchester and found that it is a WalMart special. Like I said it resembles the Black Shadow in every way except that it doesn't have the hinged floor plate. I will probably upgrade the scope eventually.

I have a REAL 'Black Shadow' that an FFL ordered in 2000/2001 sometime. The 'Black Shadow' is often given as an example of how bad the Model 70 degraded in the final years of USRAC. I happen to think that mine is a great rifle with a bad plastic stock. The metal is matte finished, but on my example it's done much better than what I see today. It has the hinged-floorplate and a real smooth jeweled bolt. It still has the traditional styled stock with checkering and I know just later they switched to a super-ugly plastic stock on the 'Shadow' variants.

My rifle is chambered in 7mmRemMag with a 26" barrel and it shoots about 1.5MOA with most factory ammo. I have kinda shelved the rifle for quite a while and have never worked up handloads for it but recently I have been thinking about what to do with it. I really want to put a McMillian stock on it and work up some loads to see what the rifle can do. It's a tough risk to take spending $600 on a rifle that may not shoot.