doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Just one gun?

Good choice, Hal. I was going to say my Model 21- but it might be a little difficult for trap. I do have a trap grade Model 21 but it would be a bit difficult for the other shoots.

I would pick my upgraded Fox 20 gauge Sterlingworth. Looks great and shoots as nice as it looks. 28” ejector barrels. I have never been a clay shooter but love hunting quail over my Pointers and shooting dove.

It would be a 12 gauge Fox with 4 weight 28" barrels that would come in at around 6 lb 12 oz. Course it would be made to fit me. That gun as long as it had 2 3/4" chambers and the right chokes (Light and improved Mod) could do everything I need it to. Also could shoot off the shelf ammo. Yes, a bit of a compromise in some ways, but it could handle about any chore ok.

There were a fair number of Sterlingworths being so-employed in the land of my youth. The lighter (& very light) sub-gauge versions were much loved for ruffed grouse there, the heavier ones were more general purpose and turned up almost everywhere else (much like the Field Grade Smiths). I always wanted to try one of the Fox 3 or 4-weight barrelled guns in 16 but they were priced into the stratosphere then (at least in the eyes of a newly-minted hunter/college student in the late 1970s), most were pretty beat-up looking too. I always thought the earlier Philadelphia versions (the ones with the "eye" hinge-pin) were very well-made and attractive.

One of my uncles started storing his Sterlingworth 12 at my grandfather's home about then too (late 70s) so while I got to examine it closely, I never got to use it (I stayed there in the summers during my college years, working at a nearby lake & resort). His wife at the time filed for divorce shortly thereafter (which likely explains it's presence in my grandad's gun cabinet). My grandfather's one-gun solution was a nicer NID Ithaca in 16, which he used only sparingly in his later 60s. He didn't hunt anything but upland by then. His other gun, a saddle-ring carbine Model 94 (in .32 Winchester Special) sat quietly in the black cherry gun case that I now have sitting in my home. The last time I'd seen him carry it for deer was in the late 1960s when he was the age that I am now. Hmmm, a sobering thought.

My grandfather's brother-in-law (from Mercer County, Pennsylvania) had a one-gun solution as well. It was a Diamond Grade Charles Daly in 12 that he'd left to my grandfather when he passed in the middle 1960s. It sat in my grandfathers gun case where I could carefully (and quietly) ogle it but... I never saw it used by anyone, ever. It looked as new.

AH fox with 16 gauge and 20 gauge barrels. Bobby

In an act of incredible irony (Smiths were where I started), I was chatting with my brother the other day and he remind me of a shotgun that is sitting in his safe completely unloved. A mid-to late 1920s LC Smith 12 Field Grade with 30-inch tubes choked mod and full. The gun has seen little use (and he's certainly not using it) Weighing in at well-over 8 lbs and it actually fits me fairly well (no cast). Vintager target gun, anyone?

Hard to argue against Hal M. Hare‘s M21 decision.

For me it would be my Father’s 12ga Superposed. (I know, Heresy for a 16 ga guy as I have been for years)

Of guns I brought, probably my 12 ga Boss SLE. (Custom restocked for me and new barrels in 1979)

Fortunately my arsenal is limited to over a dozen and not one. Far too many 16ga SXS guns to let go of.

Many of us here do live in blessed excess, I fear. The bounty of a life well-lived in these wonderful United States. We all stand on the shoulders of giants.

I had just one gun from my mid teens to my mid thirties, well guns in the UK where expensive before the days of the cheap Spanish imported shoot it today broken tomorrow low cost guns. My first guns where borrowed from friends and family members living in a country area everybody seemed too have a gun. My first gun purchase was a Cogswell & Harrison 12 Bore Side lock best beautiful to look at and shoot. That is the sales pitch over now reality, I purchased the gun from a farmer after he had fallen on the gun putting a crack through the hand of the stock, even if I say it my self the repair I did was completely invisible. . Another not so goof thing was the barrels had been polished and lapped more times than the local dog track .740 was a well past hope on a warm day the barrels were out of proof and in proof on a cold one. Being my only gun it did everything from clay to walk up even took a turn on the salt marches wild fowling. I eventually parted with the gun after some bargaining with a gunsmith in one of the local towns he had started out in the gun trade working for Cogswell & Harrison and wanted a good one at a low price, well I could not afford to have the gun re barrelled or sleeved so he gave me an offer for the gun and I did not mention the stock repair. I have just one photograph of myself with the Coggie as a reminder of sell something and in the future you will wish you had not. Looking at the photograph now "was I ever that young" with a hair cut like that.



I did see the gun again after it was re barrelled in Birmingham, it looked good and with a person who would look after it though I do occasionally wonder where it is now..

After looking through my safes and deciding and then changing my mind many, many times, I think I finally decided that I could do anything I have ever done before with a shotgun with my very dependable Ithaca Model 37 Deerslayer. Slugs, buckshot, birdshot. Shoots them all and I have killed deer and many quail with it. Oh, can I still say it is one gun if I also keep the 28 inch vent rib barrel I have for it?