Both my grandfathers were long dead before I arrived. My father & paternal grandfather were both tarheels and my paternal grandfather hunted with a Parker that was lost to history somewhere along the way, so I cannot even venture a guess to its vintage nor grade. My father owned one shotgun, a model 97 Winchester that went back for a complete refurbishment in the early 50's. He hunted ducks with it, meaning that he took off from the office and hunted ducks until the season closed. He stopped hunting them when the limit was lowered from 25/day to 10. That is not saying that he killed 25 ducks per day for the whole season or ever killed 25 ducks in a day, rather it was more coincident to other changes in his life and ways, like the war & marriage and my brother & I. He also was a dove, quail and pheasant hunter and a fine shot. I have his gun today. It is a plain bbl'd 97 and has a Mod choke that throws full patterns. I don't shoot it much, but I do cherish custodianship of it.
My maternal grandmother was perhaps the real hunter on that side though both she & my grandfather hunted extensively when she was a spry young thing. She did a fair amount of big game hunting in foreign places, inclusive of the dark continent and bear in Alaska. The only surviving shotgun was a 12ga. Belgian SxS w/Damascus bbl's & Jones underlever that was sorta mostly still there, a wall hanger at best. I gave it to my brother some years ago and I hope but do not know for certain that one of his two boys has it now. All the rest of the guns, mostly rifles were stolen from an uncle many years ago. I remember seeing some of them, inclusive of a Remington pump w/the spiral tubular magazine and some old Winchester big bore levers. The only other gun to survive was a Winchester pump w/octogon bbl. chambered in .22 short, my grandmother's rabbit rifle. A cousin has it today and it shall remain quite safe & cared for in his hands.
The smells of spent paper cases and Hoppe's #9 are what I recall above all else of my father's shotgun adventures. That was, for me, dove shoots and I went from the time I was an infant so I was told, tho I can actually only remember it back to perhaps age 2 or 3. It is, in fact, almost my earliest memory .. going to a friends farm to shoot dove. I can remember him getting out of his '41 Ford Club coupe, taking his gun from the slip and putting his old jacket from Von Lenierge & Antoine (sp?) in Chicago [I also have that jacket] on and dumping a box of red cartridges in one of its' pockets and then sending mom & I on up to the farm house to see his friend's bride, and I can remember that like it was yesterday, even now. I can also remember some years later when I was allowed to actually shoot that '97 for the first and only time for many years. It was on the side of a tank dam [a 'tank' in Texas would be called a pond in most other parts of the world] and I was knocked back into a prickly pear cactus and got my tender backside, inclusive of a fair amount of posterior, embeded with thorns. I don't think he minded in the least that the extrication of thorns from my backside kept him from a limit that afternoon. He never mentioned that I missed the bird nor did he ask if I wished to try another shot. It was late in the day and the light was waning and I quickly determined on the way home that not all the thorns had been removed. Good times, those.
There was an ocassion when I was 12 and after I had my first 'official' gun of my own, a model 62A Winchester that I was busy hunting rabbits behind the dam of a conservation lake on a place that he had leased about an hour N. of town and I had the misfortune to move the tall dry grass back w/my bbl.trying to see 'what' was making it move and found myself facing a skunk's wrong end at very close range. It was a seriously humiliating ride home in my undershorts with my shirt & pants carefully wired to & riding on the rear bumper ledge of the '50 Chevy deluxe that was the farm & errand car. Wasn't a lot said on the way home, perhaps something about tomato juice. I figured that I was fortunate not to have to ride back there on the bumper with the pants. Still have the 62A, but it was the first and last time I was ever skunked in that manner. Dad & I had a lot of good time together. He never said a lot.
