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Brian it is never easy losing a dog regardless of age--yours or the dog's. I'm sorry for your loss. Our MuttPak lost two this year. Abby at 15.5 and Toby at 16. Willa is now 12 and Snap is 3.
Gil


Eleven short years
A lifetime of loyalty
Mollie sleeps heart deep.

Brian, I’m sorry for your loss. Our sympathies are with you.

It helps to keep them from buying them from dishonest sellers.

Like you.

Best,
Ted

______________________________________________________________________________
I imported new French guns for two decades. My policy was the guy got two weeks, he could shoot it all he wanted, and he could return it if he didn’t want it.

How ‘bout you?

I have been where you are, and, I will go there, again. I suspect most of us will.

You have my deepest sympathy.

Best,
Ted

the tears and sadness and heartache are bad but a small price to pay for that they give us in return

be grateful you still have Annie...

perhaps the new year is the time for a pup...

to refocus Annie...

and to help you all to cope with your loss...

So sorry about this. We all know it's coming but doesn't make it any easier.

Brian,
I'm so sorry for your loss of Mollie, nothing more painful than an empty dog collar. May her memories remain with you always.
Karl

The calligraphy in Victorian sales records is often pretty indecipherable. If a name cannot be found a “fuzzy search” of yields results.

I think it was another member of this forum who observed “Wouldn’t life be better if our dogs lasted our lifetime and we just had to replace our guns every 10 years or so”.

Sorry about your loss Brian. One helluva bird dog and she was a sweetie no doubt. All bird dogs are special, but this one sounds like a cut above.

her first [pheasant at 5 months. My sons first bird shot on the fly.


[img]https://i.postimg.cc/25Jc23q2/IMG-4630.avif[/img]

[img]https://i.postimg.cc/25Jc23q2/IMG-4630.avif[/img]

your truth, but not others...

you appear to not be able to accept this simple fact...

there is and has been a healthy niche market in this country for French made double gons...

collectors love them for their differentness...

frenchmen love them, well because they are examples of frenchness...

grouse hunters love them for their light weight and lively handling characteristics...

why should one have to deal with pontificating, negative, blow hards, such as you...

With great sadness recently had to put my beloved Mollie down. She was 11 ½ years old. Mollie was a Filed Bred Springer Spaniel out of Pheasant Feathers Kennel in Pennsylvania. 13 FC’s and FTC’s in her bloodline. What a dog. what a friend, what a companion. What a hunting partner.

Mollie developed a tumor in her head behind her eye about a year ago. It was very slow growing. Inoperable. I noticed about 6 weeks ago she really started slowing down, lost her ap[petite (she was a chow hound normally) and was just not herself. 3 weeks ago she had a massive seizure. About 5 hours later, again. I called the vet but it was late at night. I put her in her crate to keep her safe. She had multiple seizures that night. The next morning I expected her to have passed but she didn’t. She came out of her crate, barely able to walk. I knew it was time. As I led her out, my wife said to her she hoped she would be better. I told her to say good bye because I think she isn’t coming home. My wife kissed her one last time and cried as I drove away.

Got to the vets office. The practice was sold but Doc E still came in and I have known him for years. He was a bird hunter and bird dog guy too. He knew the bond and the heartache.
We talked for a bit and he said there was nothing else that could be done for her except to let her slip away peacefully. I had a woodcock wing and her bell. I sat with her and stroked her head and looked in her eyes. I held that wing under her nose and let her breath in that smell a little longer. Doc E prepped her and then gently slid the needle in and he looked at me and slowly closed her eyes breathing in the scent of a woodcock and hearing her bell just like being in a woodcock cover. I held her and cried. Doc E left me with her and I sat and stroked her head and remembered so many times afield with her. Her first day home as a pup, her first grouse retrieved to hand. He life with the family. With kids, grandkids, friends.

She also left behind her best dog friend Annie , my Epagneul Francais (French Spaniel, not a Brittany) that I got a year and a half in anticipation that eventually Mollie would be gone. I didn’t expect it this soon. I even had one last hunt a a preserve scheduled for her and my son ( who killed her first bird; a pheasant) when she was 5 months old. She flushed it and retrieved it to hand like a champ. Mollie was an awesome retriever and was more of a water dog than most labs I have ever met. Besides having a very strong affinity for mudholes which she joyously swam in, rolled in, wallowed in with great gusto.
Mollie was a gentle dog, never aggressive towards any dogs or people. She didn’t like cats. She would take a biscuit out of my 4 year old grand daughters mouth without ever touching her face. Mollie flushed and retrieved a lot of woodcock and a fair amount of grouse. She would pick up woodcock with9ut batting an eye. The taste didn’t bother her at all.

Mollie will have her ashes spread wear she got her first grouse and a portion will go to one of her most famous woodcock covers where she made a most memorable retrieve my bird hunting partner who remembers that retrieve to this day. Its hell to lose a bird dog. But Annie will carry the torch now. I have to have a dog. Rest in peace Mollie.
Mollie with first grouse





Mollie and Annie, her best friend when Annie showed up



[

Curious did you base your deduction that Mailland was misspelled because you found no Mailland in your search?
I have made a few attempts to find the Army list I could open but no success yet.
Thank you again

The truth isn’t negative, or, positive ed.

It’s just the truth.

Deal with it.

Best,
Ted

blah blah blah...

why not just reserve your presumptuous negative comments...

until after this petite little gun is rehomed...

hopefully, with a french grouse hunter...

ellenbr, I sent you a private message.

Where does this one fall in your French “good, better or best” salesman’s quality scheme, ed?

https://www.gunsinternational.com/g...-ahm-none-410-gauge.cfm?gun_id=103530334

You know, this French gun doesn’t look good, better, or best to me, ed. If you were selling it, would you refer to this one as a good quality French gun?

Of course you would. That’s how you roll, ed. Anything you have for sale is great, isn’t it, ed?

You are all butt hurt about the fact I pointed out it is a mid pack French boxlock, while ignoring that the mid pack boxlock has some serious shortcomings here in the new world, circa 2026. Short chambers. Unsuitable for steel shot. 12 gauge, useful, but, somewhat out of fashion as of late. Well, a lot out of fashion, actually.

I know more about your friend’s gun than you might want to believe, ed.

You’ve been here for years ed. You no doubt have discovered the level of proof, applied when the gun was built, gives us important clues about the gun. Yet, you continue to do crap like this:



Nobody can tell, from your picture, what level it was proofed at. That is important to the discussion, because, proof was not free, ed. If you were building a gun that was the top dog in your kennel, you had it triple proofed. Triple Proof cost more money than standard proof. Proof in France was not actually compulsory, but, truth was nobody would buy an unproofed gun.

See this gun, ed?



See this one?



This one, from Belgium?



All these guns use the exact same action your friend’s gun uses. They were typically purchased by a maker, in the white, from the manufacturer, and proofed at whatever level the customer was willing to pay. You could specify a fancy scroll back, ejector frame, side clips, or, if you feeling really sporty, a single trigger, but, the French, to a large degree, avoided single triggers in their mid level boxlock guns. Notice your friend’s gun has none of these features. The company that built your friends gun specified what they were looking to build and bought the in the white and barreled action. The company that took the proofed, barreled, and in the white action could have been a major maker in France, or, literally, could have been a husband and wife who worked in the trade and moonlighted across their kitchen table to produce a few guns a year to better their standard of living. The basic boxlock action your friend’s gun has was available all over Europe, to anyone who had the money to buy it.

It isn’t a bad gun. They were sold to people who weren’t looking to spend top quality money on a top quality gun. The problem, as I have pointed out for a few pages, is the time and place the gun has landed at. Circa 2005, it would have been a lot more desirable than it is right now.

But, you already know that.



Best,
Ted

Ai claims it’s a William Baker patent sidelock, specifically utilizing his 1906 patent design for a simplified intercepting safety mechanism?

and, the other french gun I had, a robust deluxe, went to a french man, because it looked like his grand fathers gun...

so, try to understand that some people are attracted to guns, without regard for your negative feelings...

but because of their own positive needs...

some of you guys really try ones patience...

with your know it all, negative attitudes...

how bout, if you have nothing positive to say...

then say nothing...

you know nothing about this gun nor its maker, except for what I have told you here...

yet, you judge it to be of low quality based upon some weird belief that it is one of millions of low quality french made guns...

well guess what Ted, there are no low quality french made guns...

only good, better and best...

The fact that the Eddystone is sporterized (not in the same configuration when it left the orig maker), that alone takes it out of what would have been C&R status.

If the Eddy had been all orig military, but the bbl changed to something other than what was orig fitted at the factory/arsenal,,or a reproduction of that orig bbl, then that alone would
also remove it from C&R status.

Frames , bbl'd recv'rs and recv'rs alone are also Not C&R.

It goes back to an ATF ruling in 1985 (Ruling 85-10). which was a response to Importation questions about Military surplus weapons. The ATF seems to have placed that 'must be orig configuration'
in that ruling.

https://www.atf.gov/media/24226/download

Not everyone seems to go by the ruling it seems, but that is where the controversy started & comes from.

Some overseas firearms auctions and sellers will not even consider Exporting to the USA, a Mauser sporter rifle for example if it shows that it was made on a military Mauser action and not commercial Mauser action..

I'm not arguing one direction or the other,,just pointing out what the confusion is and where it comes from.
..and there are lots of arguments over this issue.

Given a choice, I also prefer fixed chokes.

LM/MOD or MOD/IM being my preference most of the time.

Yup.

Best,
Ted