I wonder if we should have a subject called "My fathers gun"....

[MSD MIke]

Old Remington bolt action 22lr made in the 1940’s. Dad still talks about working all summer to buy it. $17.00 I think. I tim shoot it from time to time and it’s accurate and functions just fine.

[gwpercle]

My Dad hunted his whole adult life with one gun . A 16 gauger bolt action J.C. Higgins . bought in 1945 when he got out the Navy , from Sears Roebuck & Co.
He used it to hunt everything in South Louisiana ... small game like rabbits , squirrels , possum and coons . Birds ...Bob-White quail , doves and Woodcock , Crows and I know of one Wood Pecker ... Ducks and Water birds .. all the different ones that you can hunt in Louisiana including water chicken . Large Game , deer and hogs .
He always said he had meant to buy a better shotgun afier the War shortage was over ... but shortages are never over so he just kept on shooting the bolt action 16 ga.
When he shot at game ... he 99.9% of the time nailed it . I only saw him shoot at one crow and not hit it ... he fired and then told me ... (I was standing next to him with my 1 barrel 410) ... " Shoot it" I threw up my gun , lead the fast moving crow like daddy had instructed and pulled the trigger ... the crow folded up and crashed to earth ... stone cold dead !
I don't know who was more proud of my making that shot on that fast moving crow ...
Me or my Dad

I have a sneaking suspicion that Dad may have missed on purpose ... just so I could take a shot on that speeding crow ...
Gary

[KMac]

I have the only gun my Dad had for my life. Dad has Alzheimer’s and it turned him from a sweet likable guy into a mean, belligerent jerk. After he threatened to kill my BIL I went and got his pistol. It is a sweet S&W model 67. I took it to the range and it misfired every trigger pull. Took it home and stripped it all the way down for a cleaning and a little piece of what looked like spring steel was under the plate. I guess it was interfering with it firing. Took. It shoots sweet now. That was my Dads home defense pistol for the last 40 years and he never shot it. It would have gotten him killed if he ended up in a SD situation.

[Der Gebirgsjager]

Like I said a few posts back, I have several firearms that could fit into this category. Another that comes to mind came from my Mother's side of the family. Her father was a school teacher/principal in a small country town in Colorado. He passed away at the early age of 35, leaving a widow, two sons, and a daughter. The daughter eventually became my Mother, and the sons were my uncles. Let's call them Uncle #1 and Uncle #2.

Things were never prosperous for them, especially in those times which were at the beginning of the Great Depression. My maternal grandmother took the three children and moved to Kansas to live with her father. He owned a small farm with a two room house, and specialized in raising watermelons. His wife had passed away early in their marriage, and after many years of living as a widower he was glad to have some domestic and farm help. He was already an older man, and not in good health. Other than the annual watermelon crop he had very little income, so what he did have was now supporting five people instead of one.

They were what you folks in the South would call Po' Folk. Very Po'. All of their clothing was at least second hand, much of it supplied through the mail by my grandmother's half-sister who lived in California. Her husband worked for the railroad moving luggage carts around the depot and onto passenger trains, and by comparison they were wealthy. Cornbread made up a large part of their daily fare, and they carried chunks of it to school for the midday meal in little buckets that had previously contained lard. The farm house only had one window, but my Mother related that was all that was needed, as one could tell if the sun was shining or if it was snowing through the cracks in the board siding. It was bitterly cold in the winter. Their diet was lacking in so many necessities that my Mother developed Ricketts, a condition that caused her discomfort and sometimes pain for the remainder of her life. She passed away in 2014 at age 96.

Times were tough, but the worst of the bad times came one summer when the melons were almost ready to harvest. A hail storm with golf ball sized stones pulverized the entire crop in the field. Then, along came FDR and the Works Projects Administration, and both the boys were able to become employed. This was closely followed by WW II. Uncle #1 joined the Army, and Uncle #2 spent the war working for the Lockheed Aircraft Corp. building P-38 fighters, and later bombers. Well, of course, my Mom married my Dad, and then I came along, as did one brother. That was also during the war, and I'm a 1942 model.

I guess it was around 2007 after my Father had passed away, and I was asked to visit my brother and family in the Colfax area of California. My Mother, who had sold her mountain home, was living with my Brother and his wife and she wished to give a large china cabinet to my daughter. Also living there was Uncle #1 who needed a bit of assistance in caring for himself. He asked me to come into his bedroom, and after we settled into chairs he related much of the story about their life during the Depression and how hard it had been on a day to day basis. Then he said, "I want you to have this." He got a Savage Model 29 .22 Cal. pump action rifle from his closet and handed it to me. It was well worn and had that "patina", but wasn't rusty. The bluing had turned a uniform brown. The bore remained in good condition. Then he said that he and his brother had pooled what little money they had been able to earn by working for other farmers, and had purchased the rifle mail order from a Sears & Roebuck catalog for $7.50. They had taken turns hunting with it. He looked directly into my eyes and said, "If it wasn't for this rifle there were lots of nights us and your Mom would have gone hungry -- but instead we had rabbit."

It was a couple of years later when Uncle #2 found out that Uncle #1, gone to a nursing home, had given me the rifle. He wasn't very happy about it, and hinted broadly that I should give it to him, as after all he was half owner, and that he'd like to give it to his son. I have to admit that I had an ethical struggle--should I give it to Uncle #2 or keep it, as it was given to me by Uncle #1 who was also a half owner. Finally the scales tipped toward keeping it, as it was also connected to my Mother's history.

If I can remember to do so I'll take it out of storage, take a couple of photos, and post them here at a later date.

DG

[Wayne Smith]

My Dad was a farmer in Maine, growing corn. He had an ongoing problem with the deer eating his crop, and he did work with the game warden for several years trying various ways to keep the deer off the crop. He was farming my uncle's property about a mile and a half from the house. His hired man (and college student) had a Marlin 336 30-30 and he sold that to my Dad. Dad bought a box of ammo and set the rifle in a corner. He was over at the uncle's place, up in the barn, and saw deer in his corn. He drove home, got the rifle, loaded seven rounds, drove back to the barn, climbed the barn, and proceeded to fire seven rounds at those deer, about 70 yards away, who stood there ignoring him. He climbed down from the barn, drove home, got the box of ammo, drove back to the barn, climbed the barn, and proceeded to fire the rest of the box of 20 at those deer, who still ignored him.

He took the rifle to a gunsmith in Bangor who bent the hammer and mounted a scope. He went to the neighbor who had a junk yard and bought an old sign and put that up on the edge of the field across the road (Rt 100/11). That was about 70 yards away. He sighted that rifle in and practiced. It put many a deer in the freezer and the game warden did not like it, but could do nothing as Dad called him every time he shot a deer protecting his crops. He and Larry, the hired man, were deadly on woodchucks as well.

One year Dad had the home farm in hay and a neighbor, Mr. Hall, was harvesting the hay. We were eating lunch and Larry comes running in saying, "Getch, where is the rifle, there is a woodchuck out there!" Dad pointed to the rifle, Larry took it and ran out. We waited, expecting to hear a shot, but heard nothing. Pretty soon Larry comes back and says "I'm sure glad you put a scope on that rifle, Getch. If not Mr. Hall would have lost a battery. I looked at that woodchuck through the scope and saw two little red ears sticking up!"

When I was 16 I started reloading and reloaded Dad's ammo. He used it for years. When I was in college in West Virginia and he was living east of Front Royal, VA he called me and complained that something was wrong with my ammo. I told him we'd check it out when we were home for Thanksgiving. Friday after Thanksgiving he took a grocery bag, put a two inch solid black dot in the middle of it with a magic marker, and we took it out and hung it on a tree about 50 yards from where he had his truck parked. He picks up the rifle, rests it on the truck, and looks through the scope, and looks through the scope, ... and looks through the scope. "We did put a black dot on that bag, didn't we?" I allowed as how we had. "It was in the middle, wasn't it?" I allowed that it was. Bang, Bang. Two holes, half an inch apart, and inch and a half above the bullseye. "Dad," I said, "there is nothing wrong with my ammo. You need new glasses!"

I have that rifle upstairs today. It has a Lyman sight on it now, and the holes for the scope mount, so it is not a pristine waffle top. But it is still accurate.

[compass will]

Dad had a Marlin 93 (dated around 1921) his father gave him. Story has it when you graduated from Penn State forestry collage they gave you one, but no way we can prove it (neither went to collage). I was shooting it around 13 years ago at lever action silhouette matches with my own jacketed cast loads and it shoots nice.
I had Dad come to a match with me one day, but after the 22 match (I gave him a goldenboy) and the Pistol cartage match (he used my 45 colt) he had enough and decided to go home. really wish he had hung around and finished the rifle match with his old 32.

I also got a 336 in 30-30 from him that was grand moms. it dates to 1948 first revision. I was shooting that in silhouette also.
I also got a Remington model 14 in 35 from Grand pop. He used to say it was a great PA gun because it held 5 rounds. 4 to clear the bushes away and one to hit the deer.
But to my family these guns were tools. They were all banged up from falling down mountains and almost polished silver from wiping them with who knows what.