doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Bo Whoop just sold

NB sold Bo-Whoop #2 because he needed the money to pay his wife's medical bills, plus as he got older he found he could not shoot the big gun like he used to and transitioned to his Winchester 59. In George Bird Evans' "Letters to John Bailey" Nash talks about Irma's increasing infirmity and his need to raise cash. He sold Bo-Whoop #2 to Chubby Andrews for, I think, about $1,500. I am sure he sold off his other guns, but he does not talk about those in his letters to Bailey. Nash evidently was not much of a "saver".

Thanks Stan for providing clarity on this interesting subject.

"Nash evidently was not much of a saver"

Some people, oddly enough, just are not savers. In my many discussions with Bill Tapply he told me a few times that 'things' didn't mean much to him and he told me of several things he had inherited from his Dad that he either gave away or sold because they were just 'things' and the memories meant so much more to him. He even told me long before he was diagnosed with leukemia that he was thinking of getting rid of Burt's Gun. I have several books thet were formerly Tap's and that Bill had sold to a book shop.

Didn't mean to veer but just to point out that some people are just that way.

Destry, I disagree with you that Becker did not build the gun. I read someplace that Nash requested he build it. Even if he did not request it, there's no telling how much of it Burt did himself. But if he had not had a big part to play in the gun, more so than just boring the barrels, I do not believe he would have put the inscription claiming he did so on the barrels. The lettering does not say "Bored for Nash Buckingham", By Burt Becker", it says "Made".

I indeed misspoke when I said "exactly as they exist today". They are certainly reversed from what Nash wrote in the letter years after his loss of the gun. However, given the fact that he mistakenly transposed the digits in the serial number I find it very easy to believe he mistakenly stated which barrel the inscription was on. Thanks for pointing out my error in that statement.

Does anyone know of where any of Burt Becker personal gun are or does anyone know any of his grandchildren are now?

To name a shotgun Bo Whoop, to read his writings, "things" didn't mean much to Nash Buckingham. He would laugh and tease us of the goings-on at the auction and his not being a saver. Nothing he owned was valued more than his obligations to family, community and country. Here's Pasternak's poem as my tribute to Nash Buckingham, non-saver:

IT IS NOT SEEMLY

It is not seemly to be famous,
Celebrity does not exalt;
There is no need to hoard your writings
And to preserve them in a vault.

To give your all---this is creation,
And not---to deafen and eclipse.
How shameful when you have no meaning,
And be on everybody’s lips.

Try not to live as a pretender,
But so to manage your affairs
That you are loved by wide expanses
And hear the call of future years.

Leave blanks in your life---not in your papers,
And do not ever hesitate
To pencil out whole chunks, whole chapters
Of your existence, of your fate.

Into obscurity retiring.
Try your development to hide,
As autumn mist on early mornings
Conceals the dreaming countryside.

Another, step by step, will follow
The living imprint of your feet;
But you yourself must not distinguish
Your victory from defeat.

And never for a single moment
Betray your credo or pretend.
But be alive---this only matters---
Alive and burning to the end.

King, thanks. Pretty good.

Stan,

From what I know about it, Becker just did barrel boring for Fox and that's where he built his reputation. But that's only what I hear from some of the boys in Philly that know a lot more than I do about it.

The barrel markings are after market at best, faked up at the worst. There's no known HE Fox that's marked that way, at least that I've ever heard of. Even the guns that Becker built from Fox parts in later years aren't marked anything like that.

The letter I'm talking about was written very shortly after the guns loss not "years after his loss of the gun" so I'd say his memory would have been pretty fresh. There's no mention of the Becker name being on it at all in the letter I'm referencing.


Destry

To a lot of people, 'build' seems to mean the same as 'added a recoil pad and modified the chokes'.

I don't know what ol' Burt did to the gun, but unless he was a Fox employee working on the clock he didn't build the gun.

Destry - from what I have read, I surmise that Becker obtained Fox barreled actions, worked his mojo on the bores and stocked the piece to fit his customers' specs. George Bird Evans refers to Bo-Whoop #2 as being bored to .750/.700, while the Julia catalog has #1 at .739.

Personally, I think one of the game wardens picked the gun up and resold it. Nash marched to the beat of his own drummer. His folks put him through Harvard and then law school at Tennessee, and then he up an joins a circus troupe called "The Milo Trio." I can bet the Old Man was not happy about that career move.

You just gotta respect a guy who made it through law school and Harvard then at the end of his life was forced to sell his guns for money.