My dad hunted with a Win M12. He was a serious duck hunter. Upland was what you did to kill time when the ducks weren't around. When I turned 20 he bought me a 870 for my birthday. I used the 870 for everything for around 25 years.
In our basement growing up there had always been an old SxS just hanging about. The word was that it doubled and couldn't be used. In my whole life it had never been used. It had been purchased new by my great grandfather (1909 production) and passed down to my grandfather and then my dad.
Around 10 years ago, for some sentimental reason, my brother and I decided to get the gun working again and then had it restored as a present to my dad. We had been looking at some old family photos and found one of my grandfather with the gun on a hunt in 1942 with a bag of geese, ducks and a turkey! There weren't supposed to be turkey in Manitoba then. Some minor repairs to fix the doubling, stock refinished and receiver case hardened. We had no idea what we were getting into. Basically we just said "make it like it's new again". Luckily we had found a very good gunsmith.
It was a Fox A grade. When we got it back, it was so beautiful, we were struck dumb. And my dad loved it. After that, I had to get my own....the 870 would no longer suffice.
My dad is 86 and doesn't shoot anymore. Eye injury about 6 years ago playing squash. So the Fox resides in my safe now. And it gets shot each year. My favorite time with it was bagging a 22 pound Tom in the spring of 2009 about 40 miles from where my grandfather had been hunting in 1942. 67 years and two generations between turkeys.
We don't own these things...we just look after them for a while.
