Those old dog leg shotguns were a tool. My uncle had one that never knew what the inside of a house looked like or what a bore swab felt like. It lived out in the tool room next to the door, AND it was loaded all the time. It stayed there after he died and I saw no reason to change its lifestyle. One day I was clearing wasp nests off the eaves in preparation for painting the house. The top eaves were a good 30' off the ground at least and while I could reach them with a 20 extension ladder and a long extension on the paint roller (still not sure why I even wanted to do that) I was not going to fight yellow jackets under those conditions. I got the bright idea of shooting them down... My grandmother would have frowned on that ... I loaded some rock salt but a quick test on some old boards showed it would be a little much. I tried table salt. Bingo. Then I started clearing wasp nests. It worked great. Killed all the wasps and cleared the nest all at once.

After the salt shot I figured I should clean the shotgun to keep the rust from rusting. I cleaned it all up and kinda got sidetrack from my painting (not hard too do). I found the bore to be very rugged so I chucked up a dowel rod with a wad of 0 steel wool wrapped around it and spun it for about ten min in the bore. Got a lot of gunk and rust out but it was far form a mirror finish. I started keeping oil on it after that and now it sits in a safe as the one firearm I have that belonged to that Uncle.

I learned to shoot a shotgun with an Eastern Arms 410 that wasn't in much better condition than the one described above. I still have it too.

Those old guns carry a lot of memories with them.

Someday, someone will maybe look back on your new Henry the same way.

Alan