welcome to today photo of the Day! Here we have a hunting rifle built on a very familiar skeleton. This is the Universal Firearms Vulcan 440, made in Hialeah, Florida in the mid-1960s. Universal continued to make commercial copies of the M1 carbine from surplus and new parts, and Vulcan was trying to do something different with that platform.
Take the M1 carbine action, and instead of leaving it semi-auto in .30 Carbine, convert it to a pump-action chambered for .44 Magnum. The pump handle forgoes that familiar rotating carbine bolt, and you have a short, easy magazine-fed rifle with enough punch for medium game, something the original carbine was never designed to do. They fed from modified carbine mags.
About 2,300 to 2,500 of these were made before Universal pulled the plug, so they don’t come up that often. There are also some rumors that .44 Magnum carbines such as the Bay of Pigs era were involved, with a 1962 gun magazine publishing an article titled “Cubans and Carbines” that name-checked the Vulcan. Whether anyone actually went south is anyone’s guess. Either way, the pumped .44 Mag based on America’s favorite small wartime carbine is a great idea you won’t look twice at.
Most of our POTDs use images of our friends Rock Island Auction CompanyMajor firearms auction in the United States. Take some time to browse them current auction – Who knows, maybe you’ll find a piece of history to take home!
“Universal Firearms Vulcan Slide Action Rifle.” Rock Island Auction, www.rockislandauction.com/detail/5032/1002/universal-firearms-volcan-slide-action-rifle. Accessed 25 June 2026.
