doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com The vintage All - American waterfowler

The classic blue collar American waterfowler, a straight stocked A5, designed in Utah, made in Belgium.

http://new.photos.yahoo.com/jeffmulliken/album/576460762327104138/photo/294928803359740613/5

Jeff

2 7/8's inch Ten Bore. Hands down a real fave for serious gents in the old pre-war marshes around the West End of Lake Erie.

All it needs is a Lee Hand set, and components. Even have an old article around on how to rollup 1 1/4oz clay loads.

NID's are a bit hulky in the action, but OK. Not too heavy in short chamber -- 8 1/2lbs?

A pre-13 graded Elsie in good wood is just classic. Watch the drop, tho.

But...the REAL jonboat guys, who verged on subsistence outlaw hunters, were Model 11 Rem or 97 Win or similar machine made shell shuckers. Price, expediency, what semi-poacher ever plugged a magazine anyway? :~`) I mention this segment of fowlers because old plank punt boats were cheap to nail up, and kinda neighborhood-owned, in a pinch.

However, you might strike the proper vein by looking for a good vintage hammer gun, which may have seemed old-fashioned for those smokeless, internal-hammer guys and of insuffiicent firepower for the meat guys.

Sorta think of it as the old family gun from better days; before the swamp timber was all cut, the shallow oil wells ran out, and the big house in town had to be sold when the clan moved back to the marshy farm. Classy gun in its day, well cared for and sound, but definitely smooth from use.

Lastly, you could take the BIG assumption, and get a nice smooth Purdey, sound, handed down and well kept by the family retainer. There are quite a few gents in the literature of the pre-war set that wer not rich, just owned ONE good gun and hunted it all, with that same piece. I remember reading of 50 mile and hour mallards riding a North'er, coming over a Dakota pond, to a father and son team who drove there from The Twin Cities. It was a purdey, that the father had.

If it's smooth and gray, with wood muted by the patina of hunting, that is where I would start.

Good Hunting in The Big Woods

Note to Jeff M.

In my first awareness of well-to-do waterfowlers, there were two family choices that seemed to re-occour:

Pre-war, and of Industrial Money -- Model 21 3"

Post-war, and of comfortable travel money, suitable for annual fall trips to the Hudson Bay blinds: a 3" Belgium Browning as you describe.

The Sweet Sixteens were looked up as the Premier field gun. A Pheasant hunter with a breed-dog, store bought hunting clothes and boots, and a Sweet Sixteen ALWAYS has a well-kept late model automobile, to be admired in the farmyard, too!! ;~`)

JohnM is this what you mean?

http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.asp?Item=62919395

Yessir, James, that LC's about right. Such a gun can't really be cosmetically hurt by common-sense use. It will handily launch 1 3/8 of Bismuth at safe pressures, as well. The price is interesting.


regarding Damascus Elsie prices, I had a slightly dismaying event a couple of months ago, when I tried to sell a really, reallly nice Damascus Elsie 12, that had case and color AND Modern Dimensions. It would not even fetch an offer of 400 against it's listing of 600. And it was GOOD in wood and metal and bore.

Were I not in my iconoclastic non-gathering of material-goods-decades I would have sold other guns to own it. But, alas the toy quota is filled with intersting leveractions right now.

However, that Ten just went on my 'watch list', thank you very much, ;~`)

Our friend, Lowell, is not trusting of Damascus, good or poor. I respect his opinion on the subject, and will not point out it's superior appearance, it's never-ending lovliness..etc. ;~`)

However, I do think that we have all looked at 'cosmetic condition' so earnestly, due to the dollar value, that we forget the perfectly sound vintage guns that turn up as grist for the ham-handed, the ignorant, or the willfully malevolent. Instead, we could be using them as is, for what they are.

When I first began the study of furniture conservation, I was non-plussed that my local peers were little interested in the new level of treatments and basic knowledge that was now available. Eventually, in conversations at national conventions and in classrooms, the scenario of crafts people who know better, but are either incapable of doing upscale work or unwilling to learn came to be discussed.

In fact, active anger and resentment resulted from even hinting that the 'master craftsman's thirty years of mostly self-taught 'practice' is full of half-truths, monetary devaluations, and destruction of cultural artifacts. So it appears in the 'gunsmith' trade, as witness the current examples to hand via the'edz'. Their edzing is exactly analogous to the furniture repair trade a decade ago.

Now, thanks to Antique Roadshow and other public education, people are a lot more cautious about 'practice' and there has been some reaching out across the trade.

So, i see that Ten or the apparently overpriced LC 16 and kinda wince at their possible fate. However, while this is not a good time of year to flog off surplus, perhaps a nice downpayment on an outstanding large bid will show up in a timely manner!!

Hooo...Tens!!

Numero 7339: 30" F&F 3" 12br @ Steve Barnett Fine Guns, gorgeous!

John, altho it may, or may not see the blinds again in my hands -just looking for something that captures that spirit while I'm resting in an easy chair by the fire over the long winter months ahead. Well used, but well loved gun.
A heavy 12, or big 10 would do it.
Funny thing about good guns, and good money - they're never around at the same time.

One of my earliest memories of of one of my great uncles is when he came in from duck hunting, early one morning. He had a pair of Black ducks in his left hand, his old Winchester Model 97 pump in his right hand. His coat had a smear of mud and what I am sure was dried blood from one of the birds. Cap was low to keep his ears and neck warm. Face red, from the cold wind which had made it chapped. He gave me one of the Winchester paper empties from his hunt. I remember the clean, fresh, strong smell of powder in that old shell. In that morning I knew that I was going to be a duck hunter someday.

To this day I still love to sniff paper empties after the have been fired. The pump gun sits in the gun room. One of the few guns that I have never been tempted to fix up or improve in any way. That is Uncle Bo's gun and I am just keeping it until he returns. While not a classic duck gun to many, it is to me.

Lowell, Leaning in the corner of your den is a classic waterfowl gun. Your Fox Sterlingworth could tell stories of walking ditches, bellycrawling to the bass ponds edge, hiding in the cattails for the passing greenhead, or waiting out the honkers while laying prone between the corn rows with a pile of stalks covering a shivering body. I love the handling and feel of my Fox SW,12ga.28",F/M,7 lbs. Randy

Simple, reliable, and hellishly strong = 12br 28" M&F piece by Rhode Island Arms Co. It doesn't get much more 'All-American' than that!
Now the bad news, you're probably going to be to old to go wildfowling by the time you find one.
PS. You really need to add 'Vertical' gun to your select inventory.