I'm thinking older guns from out West are like older cars from out West, more likely to not have suffered from moisture.
I too have suffered from barbwire branding. My first new gun ever was a 12ga. Rem 1100 at age 14. First time out squirrel hunting I put a nice 1" swervy scratch on the rear stock crossing through a section of wire on our land. To this day, 41 years later, that's the only scratch on that gun and I still wence when I look at it.
Speaking of elec fences, as a kid, one afternoon my grandpop sent me out to wash the bags on his old milk cow in getting her ready to be milked. She was tied to a fence post, and I made the big mistake of taking a pale of COLD water. I started splashing the water on her bags and she started dancing a bit. Instead of getting the hint, I kept at it and all of a sudden, she reared back on the rope and pulled the fence up out of the ground. Well she didn't stop at that and pulled three strands of hot wire over on top of me. I tried to flee from the wire but as I scrambled toward her to get away from the fence, she kept back peddling which kept that fence pulled on top of me. I ended up with stripes from head to tail, and had to get a hair cut because my hair had singed together in spots!
Last edited by hspruill; 02/25/15 12:55 AM.