The Rifleman Trivia
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50 free The Rifleman trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Rifleman ran on ABC from 1958 to 1963: 168 black-and-white half-hours about widowed rancher Lucas McCain, his son Mark and a Winchester that could empty its magazine in under six seconds. It was one of the first prime-time shows built around a single parent, it launched Sam Peckinpah, and it gave early work to Dennis Hopper, Michael Landon, James Coburn and Robert Vaughn. This quiz covers the show and the people who made it: the cast of North Fork, the rifle and how it was rigged, Peckinpah's development of the series, the pilot on Zane Grey Theatre, the guest stars, the ratings, the spin-off pilots and the toys, plus Chuck Connors' unusual pro sports career and Johnny Crawford's pop hits. It starts easy and works up to questions that will test people who have seen every episode. Every answer has been checked against the show's documented production history and cast records, so it is safe to use for a Western-themed quiz night or a family movie evening.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In The Rifleman, how did Lucas McCain make his living when he wasn't reaching for his rifle?
As a rancher
As a rancher: he buys a spread outside North Fork in the pilot, and the producers armed him with a customised rifle, not a six-gun, to set the show apart from other Westerns.
Q 02What was the name of Lucas McCain's son in The Rifleman?
Mark
Mark is why his father loses on purpose in the pilot: the town boss, who has bet on another shooter, threatens the boy unless Lucas throws the contest.
Q 03Which child actor played Lucas McCain's son and earned an Emmy nomination at age 13?
Johnny Crawford
Johnny Crawford shared the 1959 Emmy ballot with his own family: his brother Robert was nominated for a Playhouse 90 role and their father for film editing.
Q 04The Rifleman was set in North Fork, a fictional town in which territory?
New Mexico
New Mexico did not become a state until 1912, so the North Fork of the 1880s lies in a territory; the town itself was invented for the series.
Q 05On which network did The Rifleman air from 1958 to 1963?
ABC
ABC bought the series after its pilot had been shown on a rival network's anthology, then ran the same film again as the first episode in September 1958.
Q 06The Rifleman was one of the first primetime US series to depict what?
A single parent raising a child
A single parent raising a child gave the series its heart: the producers judged the father-son bond, not the gunplay, to be its real strength.
Q 07Which rifle, customised with a large loop lever, did Lucas McCain famously use?
Winchester Model 1892
The Winchester Model 1892 is an anachronism in a story set in the 1880s: the real carbine did not go on sale until the year in its name.
Q 08What was the name of the one-handed technique Lucas McCain used to cycle his rifle's large loop lever?
Spin-cocking
Spin-cocking meant twirling the whole carbine around the enlarged lever loop; at 6 ft 5 in, its star had the reach to clear the 20-inch barrel.
Q 09Which Apache leader did Rifleman star Chuck Connors play in the title role of a 1962 film?
Geronimo
Geronimo gave him a big-screen title role while he was still under contract for the series, and a wife: he married his co-star Kamala Devi the following year.
Q 10In which 1973 science-fiction film did Chuck Connors play the heavy, Tab Fielding, opposite Charlton Heston?
Soylent Green
Soylent Green turned television's upright frontier father into a murderous bodyguard, one of several screen villains he played in the 1970s.
Q 11What was the name of North Fork's marshal, a recovering alcoholic to whom Lucas McCain first gives a job?
Micah Torrance
Micah Torrance turns up in the fourth episode as a lawman ruined by drink; a job with McCain steadies him, and he takes the badge after the town's first sheriff is killed.
Q 12Which future director of a Superman film directed several Rifleman episodes in 1962?
Richard Donner
Richard Donner's episodes included 'Deadly Image', in which an eyewitness swears he saw Lucas McCain commit a cold-blooded murder; Superman was still sixteen years away.
Q 13Which future film director wrote The Rifleman's pilot and helped develop the series?
Sam Peckinpah
Q 21Which star of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly guest-starred four times on The Rifleman?
Lee Van Cleef
Lee Van Cleef played four different characters between the first season and the last, years before Italian Westerns made him a star; Clint Eastwood never appeared in North Fork.
Q 22Which future Bonanza star guest-starred twice on The Rifleman before his own series began?
Michael Landon
Michael Landon played two different young men in the first season, in 'End of a Young Gun' and 'The Mind Reader'; Dan Blocker appeared once, and within months both were Cartwright brothers.
Q 23Which film-noir director helmed 51 episodes of The Rifleman?
Joseph H. Lewis
Sam Peckinpah sold the pilot script to an anthology series, directed four early episodes and left after the first year; The Wild Bunch followed a decade later.
Q 14Who created The Rifleman?
Arnold Laven
Arnold Laven also directed the pilot and 21 more episodes, and it was his idea to give the hero a customised rifle, not a six-gun, as his signature weapon.
Q 15The Rifleman's pilot, 'The Sharpshooter', first aired in 1958 as an episode of which anthology series?
Zane Grey Theatre
Zane Grey Theatre showed 'The Sharpshooter' as a one-off in March 1958; the same film opened the series proper six months later, on a different network.
Q 16Which future Easy Rider star guest-starred in The Rifleman's pilot episode?
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper played the title role of 'The Sharpshooter', the young gunman Lucas McCain deliberately loses to in a shooting contest, and came back for a second episode.
Q 17Which entertainer played circus trick-shot artist turned gunman Tip Corey in The Rifleman's 'Two Ounces of Tin'?
Sammy Davis Jr.
Sammy Davis Jr. played the gunman who rides in threatening to kill the town marshal, and returned a season later as a different character in 'The Most Amazing Man'.
Q 18Which comedian from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World guest-starred twice on The Rifleman?
Buddy Hackett
Buddy Hackett played the title role of 'The Clarence Bibs Story': a slow-witted handyman who kills a famous gunfighter by accident and starts to believe he really is the faster draw.
Q 19In The Rifleman, Lucas McCain is a veteran of which war?
The Civil War
The Civil War: he fought for the Union, and in one episode a former prisoner of war locks him up to make him pay for his part in it.
Q 20Which two future baseball Hall of Famers made cameo appearances on The Rifleman?
Duke Snider and Don Drysdale
Duke Snider and Don Drysdale each took a small part at the invitation of the show's star, a former ballplayer who had been Snider's team-mate.
Joseph H. Lewis, the maker of the noir classic Gun Crazy, directed nearly a third of the series and is credited with its moody lighting and odd camera angles.
Q 24Which Hollywood star-turned-director took charge of The Rifleman episode 'Assault'?
Ida Lupino
Ida Lupino was the only woman to direct the series; her episode, about a travelling salesman accused of forcing himself on a local woman, aired in March 1961.
Q 25Which future I Spy star wrote a two-part episode of The Rifleman?
Robert Culp
Robert Culp wrote 'Waste', the two-part opener of the final season, in which bandits trap the McCains in a ghost town and Lucas ends up helping to deliver a baby.
Q 26In which 1958 Western epic did Chuck Connors play the trouble-making Buck Hannassey opposite Gregory Peck?
The Big Country
The Big Country came out in the year he was cast as Lucas McCain, so audiences met Connors the trouble-making bully and Connors the upright father within months of each other.
Q 27Which studio produced The Rifleman?
Four Star Television
Four Star, co-founded by Dick Powell, also made Trackdown, Wanted Dead or Alive and Burke's Law.
Q 28Which star of the 1941 horror film The Wolf Man guest-starred on The Rifleman in 1962?
Lon Chaney Jr.
Lon Chaney Jr. appeared in 'Gunfire', in which a gang rides into North Fork to spring a jailed member; the producers liked to cast such veteran film faces against the regulars.
Q 29In 1958–59 The Rifleman ranked fourth behind Wagon Train, Have Gun – Will Travel and which top-rated Western?
Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke led an all-Western top four in 1958–59; The Rifleman never ranked so high again and had left the top 30 by its fifth and last season.
Q 30A 1959 Rifleman episode, 'The Indian', served as the pilot for which NBC series starring Michael Ansara?
Law of the Plainsman
Law of the Plainsman kept Ansara's character, an Apache educated at Harvard who serves as a US marshal, and ran on NBC for a season from 1959.