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I was in the navy from 1968 to 1989. The day after I came back from Vietnam, I went to Arden Sports and shelled out $288 for a used Browning Superposed Lightning trap gun, serial number 69172. No salt cured wood. i took it with me to Connecticut. I kept my guns at a range called Foxtown. it was about 25 miles from the sub base. The gentleman who operated it smoked smelly cigars. The guys who were stationed on the subs and the base shot the Winchester Model 101 and the Dalys made by Miroku. i was the only one whoi shot a Browning. Understandable when you consider how the Brownings had climbed up in price. i did a lot of shooting. i wasn't that good, but i enjoyed myself. I have a few memories i would like to pass on. I finagled a tour of the custom shop at the Winchester factory. The person i talked to told me they generally didn't do tours. I told him i wasn't going to steal any secrets. i was an admirer of fine guns. About an hour, later, i was in New Haven. The head of the custom shop greeted me and introduced me to these master craftsmen who worked with metal and wood. They showed me what they were working on and answered my questions. i was there for about an hour and came away with an appreciation of what they did. A friend of mine and i were at the range one Sunday and there was an older gentlemand, his wife, and grandson. He had a Parker single barrel trap gun, thast he had restocked by someone, halfway between Hartford and New Haven. i had never seen a Parker singlke barrel trap gun. I believe the barrel was, either, 32 or 34 inches. He was shooting handicap and pulverizing the clay pigeons. he let me and another sailor shoot it. i was amazed at how well it balanced. Beretta had come out with a singgle barrel trap gun. It was built upon a single barrel shot htey had. The opening lever was under ther bottom of the action. One of the guys had one that had cracked in the small of thed pistol grip. He proceeded to destroy the gun by smashing it against a telephone post. It was the second one he had bought. YUHou would have thought he would have boughta Browning BT 99 or Winchester 101 single barrel trap gun.

Hi Colin

Your reminiscences brought back a couple of connected memories to me. After my father (Capt. James M. Kirk) retired from the USAAF to England in 1963 he called in at the Rod & Gun Club halfway between Lakenheath and Mildenhall AFB in Suffolk, England and bought for me a brand new Habicht 12 bore/ gauge side by side non-ejector shotgun for the huge sum of $155, tax free. It came in a cheap dismal carboard box, where it lived for many years as a penniless student under my bed. Its chokes were 3/4 and full, which I had opened out to 1/4 and 1/2 many years back. With 2 3/4 " chambers it is now useful for steel loadings.

I now know that it was made in Spain in 1964 for the Austrian retailer Habicht. It has 27 1/2" barrels, pistol grip, sling swivels and a cheek piece, so nothing like a classic English game gun. However what it did do was to keep alive my interest in shooting, so I started pistol shooting in 1980, then rifles in 1996 and game shooting proper in 2014, mostly with my Webley 600.

Thanks Dad - a great Christmas present for a 17 year old!

HB

Colin, thanks, I love stories like that. When I moved to Alaska in 1971 we did work on Adak Island in the Aleutians. It was a Naval Base and we were given Commissary privileges by the Captain of the Island. The Commissary sold Browning over unders. The Superlight over under cost $325 there. Several guys had many boxes of them stacked under their bunks in the Construction Camp. On the Mainland, they were much more expensive.