doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Be thankful for your doublegun.

Mine would be a 12ga sxs, splinter/pow, swamped rib, weighing no more that 6.5 lbs, two triggers, fits me perfectly, choked to my best benefit, solid enough I could shoot an unlimited amount of target games without worry and I would have acquired it 40 years ago. I did not. As result, I get what the OP is saying.

The guns that mean the most to me of late were all pretty much given to me. I hunt them, none is a perfect match to my style. None of them would be considered truly expensive, or, precious, as guns go, and it doesn't matter to me.
I can't say I have a collection, it is more of an accumulation. More than I need, I could stand to sell a few, but, I won't. Like James, I can't always put my finger on why some of them are here, but, those guns really don't shoot better or worse than the guns left to me by others who valued my friendship and company, that mean the world to me.
If I didn't own a dog, I might not hunt. I'd shoot at my club, but, it wouldn't, couldn't, be the same. The interplay with the several generations of Setters that have stolen, and, one by one, broken, a little piece of my heart, keep the notion of the gun, in itself, from getting out of hand.

My dogs are the calender of my life. I ripped that quote off from Bodio, I think, but, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Best,
Ted

Nice.

Ted, I've been fumbling around with the term and concept of "collection". Doesn't fit at all with what I have done. I like your term "accumulation" and was quite pleased when I came up with the notion that I have been "gathering" guns. Find them here and there and bring them home. LOL

"Two classes of people on this forum have it knocked. A few guys here shoot guns that are exactly the opposite of what most of us want. They clean up when that style double comes along. Then there are the dog men, who know that the gun is almost unimportant... that watching the dogs run is all that matters."


I believe there are far many more categories of collectors and dog people. I run dogs at the highest level of competition and hunt them as well. I find it very satisfying to run my 2 labs and a mini-dachshund on a pheasant hunt while handling one of my more rare and exotic doubles. I also get great satisfaction in putting up the gun and running the dogs or putting up the dogs and handling a fine double. I do find I have developed an intolerance for poorly trained dogs and autos with synthetic stocks.

For my own part I collect the more and rare exotic doubles as individual guns and also on a theme or type for example I have an A, B, F Trap 1894 and 1889 hammer all Remingtons. At some point I will ad a C or D grade and an older external hammer with lifter. I buy and gather/accumulate many average ones for hunting and shooting and train my dogs almost every day. If time and money permitted I would have another 20 dogs of all different breeds for many styles of hunting and they would all be trained up. My dream is to have a herd of mini-dachshunds with an English cocker or two just for close range pheasants.

Now is that three categories?

Tamid,

I got a big laugh out of you post. Unlike the other comments where it was easy to see who was "fer me or agin me", I thought you must simply be eccentric... with enough money to be as eccentric as you want to be. Then I remembered how many times a setter looked up at me with disdain, after a quail ran into a groundhog hole. You may be breaking new ground with a pack of dachshunds. But how do you tell when they are pointing?

I got all the way through Psych 101 so I will choose to be "happy and not unhappy" about all the posts!

Volleyfire,

You must of missed this picture of my pocket pointer in the favourite hunting pics of 2016.

upload gifs

Ps: My dachshund is a flusher not a pointer.

Have several acquaintances and some friends with cabinets full of "bests". To a man they all hunt with autos citing vintage fatigue or recoil as the cause.

I can see their point but cannot bring myself to opt for an auto, too many procedures in loading and unloading. An old Citori with a custom stock solved the "polyguny" problem for me. It must be a good one, the most frequent comment it elicits is "do you want to sell it?". Nope! It is mine more than any gun I have ever owned. I Own it, not the other way round, and that is a good feeling.

I like this from Bob Cash:

"I built a cabinet that couldn't be used on a regular basis, nor could they be displayed for fear of loss. Might as well collect pictures of great guns.

Now, for me, less is more."

Minimalism, some say, is a sign of true wealth.

The true minimalist is someone who has learned to be comfortable with little or nothing most usually with little means to accumulate more. My father was like that. A man with little education, no wealth, five children to feed. But he was a humble man, gave to others what he had and was well loved and still is a 94. Many of us are minimalists, not by choice but by means and few are comfortable with it.

I have road the roller coaster from little means to more than I need and back again and have accumulated enough to fill my home with various collections of antique furniture, pendulum clocks, tube radios, cameras and equipment, mounted birds of prey, vinyl records, guns and hunting paraphernalia. I like the ability of variety to chose which and what I want to enjoy at my whim (sounds like I have a way more than I really do.) I do not accumulate wealth for my children as I have none. In the end I really don't care where my collections go. I do hope they are to people and homes who understand and enjoy them.