doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Your First Double

My first double gun was a 12 ga. Savahge Fox model B. I was 17 yrs. old and paid $70.00 0f my hard earned molney for it from Stoeger. I used it up until my 70th birthday some yearts ago. I must have shot hundreds of waterfowl and pheasants with it. I used it to shoot trap. It is still tight, but the firing pin holes area tad worn. I should get them bushed. I shares a cabinet with Charles Daley, L. C. Smith, Remington, Crescent, and my grandfathers old Belgium hammer gun which I load black powder shell for.

My first double gun was a 12 ga. Savahge Fox model B. I was 17 yrs. old and paid $70.00 0f my hard earned molney for it from Stoeger. I used it up until my 70th birthday some yearts ago. I must have shot hundreds of waterfowl and pheasants with it. I used it to shoot trap. It is still tight, but the firing pin holes area tad worn. I should get them bushed. I shares a cabinet with Charles Daley, L. C. Smith, Remington, Crescent, and my grandfathers old Belgium hammer gun which I load black powder shell for.

My first double was a Remington 1900 that my dad gave to me when I was about 13-14 years old. I broke the buttstock on it, and it then sat in a closet at my parents house for the next 30 years.

I finally drug it out about 10 years ago, finished a stock I had started many years earlier and have since used it a time or two on uplands.

MY first double was a Savage Fox model B. I had saved my earnings until I had $70.00 and purchased it from Stoeger. I was 17 yrs. old at that time. I have lost track of how much ammo has gone through it, but I used it for trap, water fowl, and upland game birds. I must have harvested thousands of game birds with it. I retired it when I reached 70 yrs of age. That was over six years ago. Getting too hard to climb fednces. The firing pin holes are a tad worn, but the gun is still tight. I should get them bushed if I can find a good double gun smith. I have since been using my grandfather's old Belgiuum hammer gun using my blacl powder handloads. It has harvested quite a few pheasants.

Mine was an L. C. Smith OO grade 12 ga. that I bought for $90.00 at an auction. The wood and metal was very good with no dents or scratches, and the checkering was very sharp, but it had almost no bluing, case colors, or varnish. It was strange that it could be so thin on finish, yet be in great shape otherwise. Oh, I almost didn't buy it because I thought someone had fitted barrels from another gun to it. The locks said L.C. Smith and the barrels said Hunter Arms Co., Fulton, N.Y. That's how much I knew about doubles. I'm still learning.

The first double I ever used was my father's Stevens Springfield 16 gauge, the gun with which I killed my first pheasant. That was back in 1965. The gun is still in my vault. The first double I ever owned was a Bernardelli Gamecock 20 gauge with 25 inch barrels. My wife and parents bought it from the old Paul Jaeger's shop, where it was sitting on the used gun rack, when I graduated from law school. Still have that one, too.

I bought a 20 ga. Stevens Fox Model B about 50 years ago. It was about $110

When I lived in New Orleans I would take it snipe hunting in the swamps along the Mississippi south of town. One day I dumped it in the salt water. Couldn't believe it. The next week the bunch of us decided to go hunting again, but my Fox was still in pieces after being torn down for rehab. I borrowed a Winchester 97 and dumped that one too. I offered to clean it out, but Ron didn't think it was necessary. I quit my job the following Friday and moved north where the water isn't so nasty. Never did get to follow up on the 97. I keep thinking a good cleaning really was necessary.

Ten years down the road I had more money and found there were nicer guns available, so I sold the Fox for $145.

Incidently, I always thought the swamps were beautiful. Everthing was a shade of gray. It was like living in an Ansel Adams photo.

My first double was a Sterlingworth 16 gauge. I got it for a song because the previous owner had stored it wet in a wool-lined case. The resultant rust pits were then buffed out and the barrels re-blued. Very wavy, and I shudder to think how thin the barrels were. I found that it shot magically, but even back then I viewed those thin barrels with suspicion and soon swapped it off on my first L.C.Smith. The rest is history, as they say!

My first double was a Savage Springfield model 511 in 20 gauge. I paid $145.00 for it.

Imagine a double more economically made than a 311!! As Greg said, the forend was held on by a screw. To break the gun down you had to take off the forend and then depress an external coil spring that kept the barrels and action together!! Needless to say the gun didn't get broken down too often.

I found a brochure on the gun at a gun show and it was listed under Savages "economy line".

I shot an awful lot of squirrels and rabbits with that gun. I couldn't hit a bird with it to save my life though...

I still take it out once a year to hunt bushytails.


Bryan

I still have the first shotgun I purchased 40 years ago at age 16. It's a Daly Empire Grade 20 gauge, made by Beretta. The box has followed me around for years, and recently I found the paperwork including the original sales receipt ($149.95 in September of 1970). I would have been destined for a pump-gun except one of my lawn jobs was with a retired gunsmith... "Hank" H.A. Smith convinced me to go the double route and figured the Daly was a bargin. I'm glad I listened!