doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com What was your first sxs

A 16ga Merkel 47E, a 95% GDR gun, paid $995, hunted it 3 seasons, consigned it to a fancy gun shop, sold it for $1900, less 10%, used the proceeds to purchase an English boxlock which remains my go-to grouse gun.

This post is fun, as a lot of our board members noted the Stevens 311 seemed to be a lot of first sxs.
I have a good friend in NY that hunts grouse with a 311 16 gauge and he stacks them up with that little gun

Visiting a friend up in Michigan at his farm nothing but H&R and Stevens single shots and a double barrel that double barrel was a Stevens 311.

Visited his brother who took over the parent's farm again single shots and a Stevens 311 and a pump 22.

They sold well.

Ten years ago my buddy and I, he with 12ga 311 and I with 20 SKB, crawled on two blacks swimming heads-down on a fairly open creek. When we stood up, about 40 including a mallard went up. Down came 11 and I said to buddy not too bad for a couple old doubles. "Three shots," he said, "my right trigger didn't work."

His brother, a Newfoundland game warden, fixed it and he's still using his 311. I mention the mallard because as my Lab piled up the ducks at my feet I noticed the mallard wasn't among them. I knew I knocked it down. Buddy wanted to leave because we were one over-limit but I said we'll wait until Jake finds it, and he did.

You just made that up, King. There�s no such place as Newfoundland.

How much was the fine?


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Good thing that 311 broke or you really would have been in trouble.

In my opinion the 311's as well as the Fox B built up into the 50's were far better built & finished than any of the later ones. Even as old as I am you could't run me fast enough to "Give" me one of those late Guzzied up Fox B's with vent rib & non selective single trigger. Total piece of Junk as far as I'm concerned. I would't mind at all having a nice pre-WWII Fox B in 16 gauge or even a Stevens of the same era for that matter.

First OU was a Spanish Universal Arms 20 ga.....
First SXS was actually 3 at once! A graded Parker 10ga Lifter,
a Fox C grade 12 ga, and a Darne R12 20 gauge.

My first double was a 10 gauge Parker Brothers D Grade. My Dad had a friend who owned an AMOCO service station in Columbia, SC. He was looking for a gun for his young son and I had an Iver Johnson single barrel 16 gauge. He had taken the Parker in exchange for gas (this was about 1948 and I was about 9 years of age) I also got an almost full box of Super X shells. I still have the Parker and most of the shells.

Best Regards, George

First time for everything, lonesome. It was my first over-limit. I grew up with market hunters and poachers in my subsistence fishing village but never participated in their illegal activities. So, risking a fine, I took the mallard home and ate it. That or leave it to constant-patrolling bald eagles.

It would have been a privilege to be fined as a win for common sense.

I don't want to make a row as I did when I said years ago here that the poachers and market hunters I went to school with---they sold for $2 a pair and landed 100-130 sea ducks while tub-shooting for Christmas---seemed more sporting in retrieving every bird even if they had to strip off and swim for it.

Shooting legally in harbours and lakes, I saw them spend the best part of the morning rowing their skiffs and shooting, scaring everything for everyone, to retrieve a cripple. I don't see making every shot count to bring it home today. Skybusting and no dog or skiff is common to the point of sickening.

Lots of interesting stories in this thread. The first shotgun I was allowed to use was a Winchester model 24 .410. That was back in 1963 and I was 9, and our next door neighbor loaned it to me for a squirrel hunt. My dad gave me 2 shells and left me sitting beside a tree with instructions to only load one barrel. I managed to get a squirrel and borrowed it for a couple of other hunts that season. The neighbor was willing to sell it, but he wanted $40 and I didn't have $40.

He wound up selling it to another neighbor and I have tried to buy it several times without success. I traded for a 12 gauge Falcon when I was 14 and learned to be a decent wing shot with it. My grandfather used a 311 as his quail gun and I inherited it when he passed. Neither barrel would shoot when I got it, but I had it repaired and still use it occasionally.