I just read the "Pump Gun" topic and was amused at some of the remarks about young people today and shooting. Perhaps, amused, is not the right word, but there was much truth in that post and in what many of us have witnessed with the new crop of hunters and shooters.

I was hunting grouse one day near a public waterfowl area with an older, but rather nice, H & H double. Some young guys drove up in an old beat up pick up truck and stepped out with their auto loaders, to hunt geese on a large, near by, pond. One of them looked at me and my Holland and said, "I have one of those just like that behind my kitchen door - I should shoot it one day". I just smiled at him and went on my way in search of a few upland birds.

As I told older gentlemen at another shotgun site you must be thankful for us having youth that even like guns or hunting. That is a blessing. Be happy at least they didn't ask you for Grey Poupon of 80s advertising campaign fame.

Ignorance is correctable. As long as someone cares enough to teach the difference. If they are interesed, they will find out, and seeing your gun may just have provided enough of a spark to start the journey.
Did you consider, that, maybe, just maybe, there is indeed a Holland & Holland Royal behind the kids door? Stranger thing have happened.
When I was 17, nothing in the world could compare to my Remington model 17.
Things have changed, for sure, in the breadth of my knowledge, if not my success at the actual bringing home of game.
Others helped me along.


Best,
Ted

Many people say things they shouldn't. I once owned an Audi 5000. A friend I hadn't seen in a long time bumped into me and, while admiring my car said "I've got one just like that". Turned out he had an Audi 4000, same color.
JR

[quote=Ted Schefelbein]Ignorance is correctable. As long as someone cares enough to teach the difference. If they are interesed, they will find out, and seeing your gun may just have provided enough of a spark to start the journey.
Did you consider, that, maybe, just maybe, there is indeed a Holland & Holland Royal behind the kids door? Stranger thing have happened.
When I was 17, nothing in the world could compare to my Remington model 17.
Things have changed, for sure, in the breadth of my knowledge, if not my success at the actual bringing home of game.
Others helped me along.



Nah, I was thinking there is a Woodward, Purdey (not to be confused with excellent Purdy paint brushes), or Boss behind them doors.

I'm sure they're around, but I don't think there're many young folks that can wake up one morning and figure they're going to buy an H&H and go grouse hunting. More likely, a young person would be sleeping in till the morning is gone and whining about how terrible hunting is while investing their time at the local coffee boutique.

I tell them pilgrims to go to Dunkin Donuts if there is any around and say go easy on the sugar. Much better coffee than in most of them coffee boutiques, so called.

Tim Horton's.

____________________________
I wonder how much will trickle down to the NS wood pulpers?

The trend is to over roast and brew to excessive viscosity.

I blame Starbucks and the goofballs on the west coast for this.

I'm not against a darker roast Colombian after dinner, but I generally prefer a fresh medium roast correctly made which means about 5 grams/cup to my taste.

Many people still agree with this concept.. Dunkin Donuts is a medium to light roast and one of the best selling coffees in the country.

Try Community Coffee out of New Orleans. They have something for everybody.

Kids to coffee...have to laugh.

My 22 year old cousin wants nothing to do with anything but synthetic and matte finish. I keep telling him to buy an old classic. Maybe someday if I keep workin on him....

Almost any coffee made from fresh ground beans will fill my cup.

There's a corollary. It takes a while to appreciate a decent gun as it does a good cuppa Joe.

A lot of people start drinking coffee at work. We have a coffee culture, built around the ever popular 'coffee break'. Many if not most workplaces have an inexpensive or even free way to feed the bean addiction. The coffee is universally horrible. Some people get hooked this way and then discover good coffee

One's first shotgun is often a price point item. The pump or automatic has since their inception been the entry point for most. Cost of a good pump/auto for a long time was less than, much less, than a good break open gun.

The worm has turned a bit. Price out the latest and greatest euro autoloaders against a good solid basic Beretta or Citori. Just about the same price now.

A young person toting a classic of whatever configuration usually has a mentor, not always family but frequently.

Don't give up on the youth of today, I have seen them change.
I have 2 Sons and from the time they were old enough to buy their own guns, were buying new pumpguns , semiautos and black rifles.
As time went on, I noticed a change in their buying habits.
I started to see some color case hardening and nice wood in their safes. It was like a switch turned on, now it seems that they are more into double guns.
Now I wait patiently for the next switch to go on....
The one that tells them when to walk away from that nice double, that needs a lot of work.
Then I might be able to finish my old projects.

If only you knew how much my Grandmother cried & prayed for me.
A wayward child, who like most males does not even start to mature till age thirty five.
The rifles of my youth were flat shooting zip code to zip code, heavy barrel, high magnification modern wonders.
Owned first classic double by age forty, & that somewhat by default.
First muzzle loader, by fifty five.
Some of us are just late bloomers.

I have much hope for the youth of today & see that realized in them as they mature to appreciate fine wine, ground coffee & best guns. We can foster & mentor this development in them by getting up alongside them & giving them a shot with our classics.

I will not cry for them, but like my Granny did for me, I will pray.
O.M

I like what Southern writer Charles Nicholson said: "Hunting makes coffee taste better in the morning, and whiskey taste better in the evening." Just be leary of the guys who need a shot of Bourbon in their Tim Horton's, en route to the duck marsh or grouse covert for the day.

I fear I am quickly leaving the classification of "youth" but for me it has always been the classics and the history. I credit that largely to two things: First: growing up in Pennsylvania, where the hunting culture is or was unique to anywhere else I have ever seen. People who never owned a piece of camouflage or a pick-up truck still had family deer camp "up north" and made the annual homage for Deer camp, and secondly Pennsylvania Game News magazine. I read them at Grandpap's and picked them up from the elementary school library. It is a great publication and a serious "kudos" the PA game commission for what they created and achieved there. I still donate a subscription somewhere every time I renew mine--- but good on the Game Commission- when I try to send them to schools they say they already provide them free! My kids will have free access to all my Game NEWs and DGJ and the best, socks, boots, and gloves I can get them!

It a goofy picture of me... but it's my little girl I am proud of!

My eleven-year-old grandson, upon passing his hunter's safety course and buying his first ever hunting license, was just bequeathed with the family 20 ga. Parker VH with A&F provenance from Bob Beach showing his great grandfather purchasing it in 1941. He loves the gun and fully understands all that it means both to him and to the family.

Read about it in the Spring 2017 issue of Parker Pages.

.

I hunt on a regular basis with 4 brothers, and have been for about 15 years. I have always been a SXS guy, mostly Foxes and occasionally LC Smith's.

In the last few years I have sold 3 of them 16 gauge Foxes of mine that they have admired. I have slowly brought them around to Ansley's finest. I felt that it was my civic duty after all, since they own the bird dogs.

Guys that like plastic semi-auto's will never really get it, but I guess that's OK too. I like buying their grandfather's guns from them.

I took my son-in-law to the range yesterday; he thinks he's fallen in love with a Henry rifle but had never shot a lever gun so we took my Winny 94. He loved it and shot it pretty well considering, so there's hope for these younger folks.

We also shot his 9mm; I've never been a handgun guy but it was tons o' fun and I actually hit somewhere close to where I aimed most of the time. Old dogs/new tricks and all that...

I still regard percolated or boiled Cain's coffee as the top of the heap.
Drip coffee just doesn't do it for me.

Classic guns, I'm pretty sure, are something one grows into.

My preference for good coffee is a local dark roast. I brew it in a Dutch Moccamaster and keep it warm in a vacuum insulated carafe or my dented 35 year-old Nissan Thermos for hunting or fishing. The old hot plated Mr. Coffee can flat ruin a pot of coffee if left to cook. I understand the criticism of Starbucks, but they introduced a wide swath of interest in decent, brewed coffee and saved generations from being stuck with instant coffee or some of the canned brown sawdust pawned off as coffee. At least for this hour, coffee is considered good for you. I'm on my second cup since crawling out of the rack. <g>

I always did, too, until my wife bought a Keurig coffee maker. I never dreamed coffee could be made that good one cup at a time. I'm old school, learned to drink black coffee in the Navy. Sweetener or creamer turns my stomach. K-cups are the way to go for really flavorful coffee. One of my other quirks is that I want my coffee so hot that it is "smokin,". I will regularly reheat a mug of coffee twice in the microwave before finishing it. I tell people who turn their coffee into a tan colored milkshake that they never really get "hooked" on coffee until they begin to drink it black. I can hardly get it too strong, occasionally ordering myself a double shot of expresso. But once, in the airport in Santiago, I got some too strong for me, no, actually twice. I bought a cup between flights in a restaurant there, and couldn't drink it, it was so strong. Dropped it in a trash can and headed toward my next flight's loading area. Passed a Dunkin Donut shop and thought "Now there's bound to be a good cup here". Bought it and, lo and behold, it was the same way!!! Trashed it, too. I like it really strong, but those people just make it wretched. Argentinian coffee is fine, but not Chilean.

SRH

I buy quality beans, grind them myself and use a French press. The very best way to make coffee, one or two cups at a time. Yum!

Everyone I grew up around hunting used pumps. All of them. So I used a pump. Until I was in my mid forties. Then I discovered SxS. Kids grow up and many, not all, will develop an appreciation for the finer things in life. But it takes some time.

+1 You just talked me into my third cup James

De Gustibus... Sorry guys, I can drink it hot and black, but prefer it yellow with creamer and sweet with local honey. Cold is just fine after the cup sits on my desk a while. So there...Geo

Yuuuchhhhh!

Si nescis melius.

SRH

The best news about kids: While they have far more options for entertainment than we did when we were growing up, the school trapshooting teams (Scholastic Clay Target Program) are hooking a lot of them on guns and shooting. If there are birds around, the fact they already know a bit about guns and shooting puts them ahead of where I was when my dad handed me a shotgun. I think I may have been 26 or 27 when I shot my first clay target. But by that time, I'd already shot quite a few squirrels, rabbits, and pheasants--many of the latter in the "pre-flight" position.

In the 6,000 pages of the 20 completed books (and one incomplete) in Patrick O'Brian's series regarding the exploits of the Royal Navy's Lucky Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin during the Napoleonic Wars, coffee plays a significant role in life aboard ships. (In keeping with double guns, Maturin has a Manton fowling piece.) From the Mauritius Command, book 4 in the series, an exchange between Maturin and Aubrey:

'... This coffee has a damned odd taste.'

'This I attribute to the excrement of rats. Rats have eaten our entire stock; and I take the present brew to be a mixture of the scrapings at the bottom of the sack.'

'I thought it had a familiar tang,' said Jack. 'Killick, you may tell Mr Seymour, with my compliments, that you are to have a boat. And if you don't find at least a stone of beans among the squadron, you need not come back...'

73 Gil

I shot my first gun in my late 50's. It was a Mossberg 500 pump. I graduated to a Beretta O/U within six months and a year later I fell in love with SxS's. No family history of hunting or shooting. It just happened. I then discovered this site.

I took my stepson, 25 skeet shooting this past weekend. I brought two guns. A Benelli Montefeltro for him and a Fox CE for me. I gave him his choice. He chose the Fox. that surprised me.

Argh. So when some says, that gun handles like a wand, they aren't thinking about the switch that their old man used on their rear end way back when?

It's not always doable, but one cup at a time and black. The more coffee aroma around, which is a good thing, the less goodness in the cup.

I never got a "wand". Was more like the handiest piece of lumber.

My old man was 6'6" and 250. He didn't need any lumber.....