doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Super nice guns for hunting, good or bad idea?

Almost all of my �too nice to use� guns have gone on down the road. In that category they become safe queens and I develop no emotional attachment to them, no history of hunts. So it was easy to let them go.

Super nice is a relative thing.

All my super nice guns are just junkers.

I simply ask myself who I might be saving it for.

Then I go use it as the maker intended.

That said, you don't have to crawl on your belly with your double barrel shotgun like John Kerry.

I certainly have a few I wish someone before me had kept in the safe!...Geo

Hunting is meant to be relaxing, not filled with anxiety, babying heirlooms. All of mine are taken out, where I go they go. Any that are too delicate to go where I go, get sold, some were even given away to avoid the heirloom angst.

If it doesn't hunt it isn't in the safe. I'd rather buy well used and taken care of than a pristine one for four times the price. It would end up looking like the well used gun by the time it left me. It would be nice if my wife can get out of it what I paid for it and have been able to enjoy it in the field.

One really glaring problem for me is the need for a very short length of pull, if it isn't short when I buy it(really helps keep the price down) I have to cut it anyway.

George's comment about not being allowed to take his wife's Cadillac hunting reminds me of a fellow club member who died in 1970, Royal Carlock, (google him). His wife would trade Cadillacs every few years, and Royal would take over the old one. They were pristine seven passenger Fleetwood 75s until Royal would tear out the rear seats and convert the car to a coon hunting vehicle. Coon hunting was very popular in Montgomery County, Maryland in my childhood years, and dogs sold for very high prices. Royal Carlock had two 1957 Chevrolets which never went hunting, a Bel Air two door hardtop and a Nomad station wagon, both the ugly factory metallic pink. These two cars were always spotless and Royal drove them until his death in 1970. The wife's not so old Cadillac was always coated with mud, inside and out.

Interesting- makes me sorta wonder what make and model of car the late Nash Buckingham might have driven, if he a license-"back in his era"--in his story about a goose hunt with Henry P. Davis, near Memphis- he details how Henry's hunting vehicle was in the repair shop, so they took Mrs. Davis's "spic and span sedan" and Henry drove it through thru mud and muck until Hell wouldn't have it. Wonder what "Mack" Davis said when they returned?

My late maternal grandfather drove Packards until they went out of production-aprox 1954-ish? Then he went to Cadillacs- still can remember being behind the wheel at age 14 on those back country roads near Chillacothe.

I love to shoot 'coons, like I do woodchucks- Never ceases to amaze me the going prices paid around my neck of the woods for BlueTicks and Walkers-- RWTF

If a gun is "too nice to use" it has no utility to me. With that said, if I had something beautiful but slightly fragile, I would likely use it more sparingly. I've been considering a decent hammergun for a while now and if (big if) I did pony up for a good one, I'd clearly be more cautious with it.

Another reason I don�t usually take expensive guns is because I have friends and hunting buddies from all walks of life, several who are not as financially fortunate as others. I don�t want to make them feel uncomfortable and I don�t want them to think of me as a snob, or even a gun snob. So, I don�t take fancy guns when I go with people less financially sound than some of the others. That may not make sense to some, but it does to me. BTW, I�d rather have a fine, classy bird finding bird dog to hunt than any fancy gun.