Something that a younger dear ol'dad and grandpa shot.
What brand name, model, gauge and barrel length would best be called, the best of the field grades.
Really a tough call. I'd probably rank the LC Smith and Sterlingworth as tied for #1.
In the Lefevers, there wasn't really a field grade, and they were generally more expensive than the others.
The Parker Trojan and VH don't turn me on, but others sure like them.
JERRY
My Dad shot a Winchester Model 50, Uncle Finis shot a Browning A-5 with an adjustable choke.
Best,
Mike
Price wise, the Parker V guns in smallbores and unusual barrel lengths seem to be at the top of the charts to have...and very expensive too I might add.
Dad shot a single shot hammer .410 that was given to him before the onset of WWII. He was expected to procure items for the meat pot, and with that gun and a bolt action .22, he didn't disappoint.
He was given a 12 gauge double of some sort during high school, which, he restocked and send down the road-heavy, was his term for it.
During a 30 year career in the USMC, Dad took Patton's advice to heart, and always used automatic shotguns and rifles.
The golden age of the double was the onset of the repeater, Thorny.
Best,
Ted
My folks have a picture of my dad, probably circa 1940, with a limit of mallards and Win 1897, that he said he borrowed from an uncle. After WW2 he bought an A5 12 ga, 28" barrel, and that was all he used for hunting!
"Beware, the man with one gun". And, a man with one repeater had a bunch of bases covered.
Best,
Ted
Mod 12 Winchester has to be tops---like it or not. Five (or three with a plug) shots out of this economical, slick and well made repeater made the SxS obsolete in the field and on the range.
Grandfather shot a Remington Model 17, passed on to my dad and then to me (my first real shotgun) back in about '55. Smoothest pumpgun I've ever shot.
I'll match my Ithaca 20 gauge Model 37 against just about anything. But #1 in a SxS has to be the Model 21. Hands down.
The more I've looked at the graded guns, the more I liked field grades. They seem so...ulititarian 'n salt of the earth!
Like these guys - well, that one guy at least!
Ted, I've never seen an automatic shotgun, but your dad probably did shoot an automatic rifle in service: BAR.
Speaking of field grade doubles, all the American classics were pretty good. Judging by the prices of used guns, the Trojan and the Sterlingworth seem to be the most sought-after. Of the classic sxs, I think the NID Field Grade is probably the most underpriced.
For an interesting all-American field grade OU, the Marlin 90 deserves consideration. I just picked one up in 12ga, excellent original condition, for a little over $300. When I gave the barrels the "ring" test, I was surprised at how "ringy" they are.
Sometimes I have to face up the reality that English IS my second language
What's the question again, please? "What did Grandpa shoot?" or "What did Grandpa consider to be the best gun for the hunts he did even though he actually shot something else??"
My Grandad shot a Damascus Parker Bros. GH 12 ga. and also had a Trojan 20 ga. My Dad bought a Trojan 12 ga. in 1921. I still hunt with the two Trojans, the GH was "rode hard and put up wet" a lot and has some serious problems which have relegated it to a rack on the wall. Too bad. -- Ed
Lowell,
My dad grew up in the depression. Game went on the table. They don't get much more salt of the earth than that old marine (2 tours in the Pacific in WW2). His gun was a 12 gauge Ithaca M-37. Full choke, solid rib and corn-cob fore-end. I have no idea what kind of gun he used before the war, but I imagine it was a hardware store variety single shot. Whatever got the job done for the least investment was the order of the day for him and his type.
Humpty Dumpty,
It's not you.
I don't think there's any way around the probability that Dad and Gramps used repeaters.
12 ga (typical) or 16 ga (better), 28", mod or full. A5, M-12, M-37. Even now, pre-1950s examples of field models can be had for not alot of money.
Sam
My dad was given a Volunteer Firearms 16 gauge single shot hammer gun when he was 12 years old. Every piece of game netted a shell so pot shots were the order of the day. He graduated to a Winchester Model 97, 12 gauge full choke that belonged to my uncle who was a market hunter. In 1964 he finally moved up to a 12 gauge Remington 870, added a Herters "Poly" choke and hunted happily until he left this earth in 1990. His rifle was one I made for him out of an old Santa Barbara 30-06 barrelled action and Fajen stock. He killed a lot of deer with that rifle. I have the rifle and my brother has the shotgun. Both are heirlooms to us.
Jim
If we're talking pre-WWII prices, the repeaters were not the huge bargains they are today, compared to classic doubles. Models 12, 31, and 37 were all just a bit under $44 back in 1940. That does make them cheaper than the LC Field Grade and Sterlingworth, both at $49, and way cheaper than a Model 21 or Parker VHE (Trojan had been dropped by then). However, you could buy the above-mentioned Marlin 90 for about $40, or the Iver Johnson Hercules, Hunter Special or Fulton, Winchester 24, or Savage 420 OU for between $30-35. So there were quite a few doubles, both sxs and OU--not including even cheaper guns like Stevens and Fox B--that undercut the repeaters more than the repeaters undercut the better quality sxs.
Lefever G and DS would be the company field grades. The rib matting alone makes them way classier than other field grades. They are tops in my book.
Patton wasn't referring to the BAR, Larry. In fact, it was the Garand. Since Dad spent some time with the Seventh Rifle Company, you can bet only one shot was used, for whatever needed shooting, most of the time.
A Garand, like his A5, would be just "Automatic" enough.
Back to Thorny's post-wasn't it Rabbit that pointed out that "salt" types most likely used a single shot of some type? $40 was two months pay, for more than most, during the height of the depression. Which, according to my Dad, stretched well into the 1940s, at least in St. Paul, MN.
Best,
Ted
. . . and Pipes chimed in that he believed the bag per shells expended might have been a bit better. Gunfare for the common man. Don't see that many Ivor Johnson Champions but the barrels are still full of H&R Toppers. Maybe they were that "first gun" from Dad. "Top o'" surely has to connote winners in the sales dept. do it not? I don't see how, given their sales figures, the I-37s and all those Win. 97s and 12s could be dismissed out of hand. And the Eastern Shore is chocabloc with dead men's Auto 5s.
jack
And there is the matter of that "old professional elite" in the words of Richard Hofstadter (doctors, lawyers, preachers but perhaps not injun cheefs). I don't want to get into the elegy to hayseed shooters with LG again but will say that one of my grandads was a Methodist preacher and would have passed as an educated "mainstreeter" in his time. I'm sure he trenched in his fair share of cabbage and turnips pre-Frigadaire but he also read Nat'l. Geographic, got out of the county occasionally, and his shooting was half-meat, half sport. The other was a farmer with a sixth grade education, had the bible read to him, and was almost all cattle and no hat as he could easily remember what it was like to have neither. Altho tolerant of hunters, I doubt he had a concept of sport hunting. The only gun I ever saw in his house was a 12 ga. single shot of the no-name variety. I'll bet he bought at least three boxes of shells in his life of 91 yrs. I saw him take a shot at a flock of starlings once. I doubt if he would have shot a rabbit since a cutterbar will do the same work for free. Some folks just like roast beef twice a day.
jack
A 12 Gauge Ithaca 37 was the only gun Dad ever had, the one with the corn cob forend and a tight full choke. That gun killed a bunch of bunnies and pheasants on Grandpa's farm in southern Ohio. Mom gave it to me years ago when Dad's Alzheimer's got bad and it still goes out with me for an occasional walk in the woods.
The Depression was bad, but some years were a whole lot more "depressed" than others. My parents got married in 1933, and my dad told me plenty of stories of pretty low wages. But he was running a service station in 1937, the year my older brother was born--and they bought a brand new Ford that year.
Production totals tell an interesting story about the firearms industry during those years. From 1930-35, Winchester cranked out 60,000 Model 12's. They made 42,000 in 1940 alone. Browning made only 3,000 A-5's in the 3-year period from 1932-34. From 1937-39 they made 24,000.
When Dad returned from WWII, he traded in an LC Smith 20 gauge for a new Mod.12 16 ga. and then put a Poly-Choke on it. I remember giving him alot of grief about that trade & the installation of that "ugly" thing at the end of the Mod. 12 barrel, but he could sure "shuck & shoot" that mod. 12
Your Dad did the right thing and I know how you must have felt: that elegant little 20 for a more practical shotgun to do it all, games and the pot.
Don't think anything my family members owned would have been tops of any list. But there were several Springfield SxS 16ga guns used for everything including Whitetail with "punkin balls". The Springfields were cheap versions of the Stevens doubles purchased just before or right after WWII. Last I checked they were all still in working order though.
Just occasionally it's more important to hit than to look good missing.
Sam
Pop loved to shoot,I was lucky we went trap shooting a lot.
His favorite was a Model 12 Black Diamond,30",and a Francotte side plate.
The model 12 is as smooth as it gets,He also had a L C Smith,single barrel,eagle grade.
I still have the Model 12 and the Francotte.
The Smith went to the author of "The Legend Lives" a new book on smiths.
Hampton
Western Arms Long Range, 12 ga. Given to me by my Grandfather so I could hunt deer at 14, after my Dad cut the stock down so I could shoot it - Still have it. Got a four point that year and another one with one antler two years later. Excused days off from High School to go deer hunting! Used it for Wood Duck, Pheasant, and the occasional Goose later on. Also a Fox Sterlingworth 12 ga carried my late great-uncle. We revered that Fox, and knew it was something special compared to my Western Arms (Ithaca made).
One of the better turn of the century feedstore bought guns might just be the RAC A grade 1894. Anytime you can buy a gun, coal oil and feed from the same place on account - can't be bad!
Utility has its own style and place in the cosmos - in the long run, it'll be the field grades that will be remembered - as everyman had one!
The relpies didn't sound like the dream you had did they ?
Here's another ol' time favorite you guys might remember......the Winchester Model 42. My father didn't hunt and never had that much in the way of guns. Both of my grandfathers died before I was born. My uncle was the hunter in the family..... everything from deer to squirrel. And everytime we went out rabbit hunting- out came this beat up, worn out, Model 42 he had. And he could shoot the ears of a flea with it too.
Nobody has dreams of sleeving a "Top ' O the field grade"....
Those, are properly called nightmares.
Best,
Ted
HD,
To answer your question, the question was, "What did your father and/or grandfather actually shoot? Model, bbl, length, &c."
Some answers have wandered from that original question, probably causing you some further confusion.
My answer(s) to the question:
My father shot a 12ga. field grade Winchester model 97 w/28" bbl.
My paternal grandfather shot a 12ga. Parker, but I cannot tell you which model as it was lost to posterity before I arrived.
My maternal grandfather shot a 12ga. Belgian SxS guild gun w/30" Damascus bbls. & Jones under lever.
j0e, I hit the large antique malls looking for old working duck decoys - didn't find a one.
Asked at an up-scale shop why?
Interest in rustic America is at an all-time high, and all the decoys are in Kansas City for the large show.
Bring lots of money she said!
The dream is alive 'n well.
Lowell you're about 20 years to late for the Antique malls....you might look on Ebay.
Teddy did someone tug on yer chain ?.....I never saw mention of a a Mossberg
...Darne it.
My Great Grandfather hunted with a double probably a Belgium (JABC) my Dad's father had a Meriden, little is know about it except that my Grandmother always called it, "that old black thing in the basement", my Father hunted with a LC Smith 12 gauge, 28 inch barrel, field grade which is close to 100% condition as my Father gave up hunting after he started a family. All double guns as it all started back in the coal mining region of Uniontown PA with my Great Grandfather teaching my Grandfather how to hunt way before those stinkin repeaters showed up!!!
All the best
Lowell, a picker came around about 20 years ago and asked what I wanted for some sea duck decoys in a shed---"coots" (whitewing scoters) bought for $1 each in my rush for a hunt on another shore. "Oh, a dollar and a quarter," I said, just to get rid of them and him. He peeled off $125 for each of two dozen. The decoys were weathered no-name decoys made by a school chum. The world's gone crazy: my $3.50 whistler and bluebill decoys are being bought elsewhere for $1,000 each.
My father, a son of the Great Depression had two guns. One was a Savage 220A that he used for damned near everthing.... Pheasant, Grouse, Patridge as well as whitetail. The other an old Remington .22 single shot that he used for squirrels, woodchucks and other "critters".
Born in 1904, Dad grew up in the mountains within the coal mine country of East Tennessee, a rough and wild area as well as a terribly poor region. For him the most important thing was the shooting ability, not the number of shots. He once told me, "never shoot at an animal...... Shoot at the killing SPOT on the animal." Never forgot that...... even during my days in the Army, it served me well.
Yea, I'm behind the times on alot of things, but did find a couple of working decoys by local oldtime Missouri carver.
I'm as shocked as you King at the prices!
There is no shortage of waterfowl history and tradition along the rivers...been goin' on for a long time, just surprised at not seeing any!
Uh, no, jOe, just telling the truth-you ever seen a sleeved American gun?
Why not?
My Mossbergs have instructed plenty of kids in firearms safety, or, been loaned to a few guys who had guns crap out during hunting season-mostly autoloader guys, but, a double or two ended up out of commision for the season over the years.
What gun do you use to instruct kids, jOe?
Best,
Ted
A single shot...but I was thinking about getting a Darne.