I've told you all before that my Dad and uncles and cousins all used pumps and autoloaders, and my first shotgun was an extremely tightly choked Savage hammerless single shot model 220 20 gauge. My uncle had one N.R. Davis double that hung on the wall above his reloading bench, and he explained that he never used it because it was too heavy, and three different gunsmiths weren't able to cure its' habit of doubling.
But there was an old German gunsmith who had a shop and gun store a short two mile bike ride from my Dad's house, and I spent a lot of time there looking at his guns, mostly stuff that seemed remotely affordable in the used gun rack. He was an ex-Armorer in the Nazi army in WWII, and I often heard him extolling the virtues of certain guns to customers in his thick German accent. One day, after he saw me looking at a German double that he had tried to sell to a customer, he came over and exclaimed in broken English, "These guns... all junk! You want see nice guns? I show you nice guns!" He took me into his shop and I soon saw that this three story building was literally crammed with thousands of guns.
The ones he really wanted to show me were guns like you'd find in the NRA Museum... extremely ornate doubles, cape guns, drillings, and vierlings... stuff like I'd never seen. He had these museum pieces stacked like so much cordwood. He explained that part of his job as an Armorer in the Nazi army was to scrap weapons confiscated by the German Army when they rolled through European towns and villages. They posted notices that any civilians who didn't surrender their weapons would be executed if caught. He said he was to remove the wood stocks and burn them, and to crush the actions or receivers in a press so they couldn't be recaptured and used against the Germans. The scrap guns were shipped to steel mills to be melted down to produce new war materials. He told me, "Oh, I scrap a lot of very nice guns... but really nice ones, I stashed and after the war, I come to United States and my brother smuggle them here to me." It boggles the mind to think he was able to smuggle so many guns into the U.S. back then when people here stress out about importing one or two guns today. And he had to have some real guts and cunning to conceal this booty from his officers in the Nazi army.
Now, these pieces weren't anything like Dad's Model 870 or my Savage. These were works of the gunmaker's art with gorgeous highly figured wood, ornate full coverage engraving, gold and ivory inlays, intricate carving, etc. Guns like that leave a lasting impression on a kid, or a grown man. And my eyes were opened to see that all doubles weren't heavy bulky implements like that N.R. Davis with the doubling problem. And that is where my addiction began. Raise a kid on black guns and pumps, and that is the road they will likely travel. Show them quality, and history, and real craftsmanship, and they just might take a different path.
