My pop and I have a pair of pre-64 .30-06 standard weight rifles - one Super Grade from 1947 and one Standard from about 1952.
Both rifles exhibit the same strange behavior.
We initially tried to set them up with Leupold QRW Weaver/Picatinny bases so we could QD to the iron sights if desired, but we ended up having to max out the windage on the scopes to one extreme to get them zeroed. We switched to Leupold STD dovetail front/windage rear bases to deal with that.
I switched out the scope on the Standard Grade to a low magnification 1.5-5 a couple days ago. Have not shot it in that configuration yet, but at 1.5x, you can see the front sight in the scope. Aligning the vertical crosshair with the front sight took all the "left" windage the base had to offer (right side screw all the way in / left side all the way out), plus a fair bit of what the scope had as well (glad that it has 125 MOA to work with).
I would be willing to chalk ONE of these guns up to someone at the factory having a bad day at the mill, but TWO of Winchester's flagship models, made five years apart, filtering down through the years to end up in the same place, exhibiting the same problem strains my credulity a bit.
FWIW, the forend stud screw under the rear sight is missing from my Standard Grade. Replacement has been ordered and we'll see if that changes anything. Not immediately sure about the state of my Dad's.
I'm wondering if this is a "known thing" with Model 70's that just isn't known to me yet.
What say the Hive Mind?