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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