Does your favourite rifle have a story?

[JLF]

My great companion for hunting big game since my beginnings. Taking all the advice of friends and acquaintances, who advised me to start with a .308 caliber rifle, but for my taste, the .308 was not the ideal caliber. It was then that I opted for the .338 win mag ....
This is my Remington 700 BDL Custom DeLuxe ...

Years ago, I chose to take off his scope, a Schmidt & Bender 6x42, and hunt using open sights.

[Estacado]

My Dad grew up during the depression. He was one of eleven kids. Raised on a farm. He would run up and down the creeks hunting squirrel with an old hand me down single shot .22. I remember as a kid, he told me how he wanted one of those lever action "cowboy rifles". He said he would have given anything back then. Times were hard and there was no money.

My Mom passed away in 1985. Dad was devastated. His birthday was just a couple of months later. I was grown, raising two kids of my own. Money was tight. I had some bonus money from work that wasn't ear-marked for anything. I went and bought Dad a new Model 94 Winchester and a box of 20 Federal 30-30 shells. You would have thought he had won the lottery. He loved that gun.

Dad passed away this December. I was devastated. After thing settled out, I was cleaning out Dad's things. I found the Model 94 in a very nice gun case. Inside was that box of 30-30 ammo I had given him. All 20 unfired shells still in it. There was a note inside the case also. All it said was "Robert's gun".

Dad never shot the gun. He must have cleaned it often. There was not a speck of rust on it. It looked like it did the day I gave it to him. No, I will not shoot it. I think I will leave it to my son, just like it is, unfired. I will just change the name to "Kevin's gun".

[FergusonTO35]

Great story, thanks for sharing!

[RU shooter]

Most of my guns are family hand me downs and will always recall fond memories for me . The two from my Pap were bought in 1928 with his first few paychecks from working on the Railroad a 1894 src in 32 spl and a Remington 17-A 20 ga. . The ones from my dad we bought in 1964-65 or so after he got out of college . Winchester model 12 in 20 ga and my most treasured gun a Rem 600 in 35 Rem . We all have killed a mountain of game with those 4 guns starting with Pap . But just picking up any of those guns just takes me back in time to vividly relive those fond memories

[charlie b]

Kind of a rifle. Mauser C96 carried by a Brit officer in South Africa, then in WWI. GIven to a doctor who treated him in later years. Doctor gave it to a young kid who he 'mentored' through his early adult years. That kid ended up in the Navy and gave the pistol to his daughter (my wife).

Garand carried by a Marine in the pacific and then handed off to my wife's father. The stock checkered by an engineering Master Chief while on a sub patrol (cold war duty). Now in the hands of a retired Army puke.

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[Baja_Traveler]

My dads Mannlicher Schoenauer 1903 in 6.5 x 54 - after the war he went to the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. He spent a whole summer carrying it while hiking across the Brooks Range, living off the land and hunting Caribou. I would dearly love to bring it back to Alaska and hunt my own caribou with it.