doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Mystery Rifle

In a recent thread, the Marshall Field gun shop in Chicago was mentioned. It sounds like it was a very interesting place. Apparently it was remembered
by many because a Chicago businessman J. Bruce Allen loaned two mounted Kodiak bears to be used as exhibits. I googled "J. Allen Bruce" and found his G&H sporter
which is well worth a look.

G&H 1903 really nice early one


However, I found also some photos on ebay of his hunting exhibitions Mystery rifle picture
If you look at the third picture of a man holding a rifle with a bear skin in the background, you will see he is holding an interesting rifle. I don't recognize it and hope someone can identify it.

Wow! Fred, you found a really interesting rabbit hole. That 03 is really nice. The carving on the grip looks familiar somehow.

The second rifle is a mystery to me and the bear is stunning! As are the rest of the photos. A great post.

My best guess is a sporter model of the Steyr-Kropatschek.

That is an interesting ad. I cannot write a history like that, but this rifle reminds me a bit of No. 101. This is a 30-06, Serial No. 412. I wish I knew owned those initials.

Could it be one of those repeating rifles with a second shotgun barrel below?

I can't help but wonder if what looks like a magazine tube sticking out of the forend, is instead a gas tube for a self-loading rifle. There were a lot of weird ones coming out
of Germany and Austria at that time.

Enough Gewher’71 and 71/84 surplus rifles were exported to North America for CIL to load the 11mm Mauser commercially.

My guess would be a sporterised one if those.

I am trying to make this into a Remington Keene, but I don't think that that works, even allowing for the resolution of my cellphone. The RK would have been a good grizzly rifle, however. 11 rounds of .45-70 would get it done.

scroll to the bottom

german hunting guns

That might be Frederick Hollender in the photo, unless he sold the rifle

Wow, that is so impressive, how did you find that?

I knew it was Mauser 98 combination gun so once I started looking for those it came up.

It would be great if there was a thread on combination guns like this, I would love to learn more. Does anyone here have one?

This is a most interesting find!
Also the correspondence between Hollender and Schüler shown on the German Hunting Guns!

I’ve known about the Allen G&H .30-06 #101 for about 20 years. Well, I knew about the gun but never knew it had been owned by Allen. I tried for quite a while to buy it but he just wasn’t quite ready to let go of it. Like many other things, I put it on the back burner and too much time passed. I see from the GunsInternational listing that it was being sold by his son so he must have passed away. (Boy, that sure was a difficult listing to read. My guess is he wasn’t an English teacher.) I suppose I can delete his number from my phone now. Fred, do you or does anyone else know what the asking price was in the GI listing? Oh well, you can’t own them all.

I don't know what the asking price was, I don't follow gunsinternational, I hope someone else can help. I only came upon that rifle, by researching Marshall Fields gunshop, which led to the bears, which led to J. Bruce Allen
which led to the ad. Who do you think did the stock? John Wright?