doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Field grades - shouldn't they be 12 gauges?

LG:

I'm gonna step out on the limb and start sawing behind and say unequivocally in answer to the specific question addressed to me that it was indeed the old "professional" class or "status elite" (read social status, not wealth, dammee!!) who bought the S/Ws and Trojans and probably also a few twosiethreesiefours. The post-Civil War mercantile and manufacturing elite which wallowed in wealth from steel, oil, transportation and colossal retailing bought the hundred dollar or thousand dollar gun depending upon just how much they enjoyed the wallow. "Filthy rich at last, thank God!" as Gene Sheperd used to say.

jack

Agree with rabbit. Just look at those old photos of big gatherings for shoots - all the guys on the club porch in knee-high leather lace-ups and riding breeches, with side-bys tucked under their arms. If you could holler "Hey, Doc!" someone would surely turn his head. Those gents with the 'field grade' guns are doctors, lawyers, shopkeepers, judges, bankers, proprietors of small manufactories. If there are a couple of overall-clad types on the edges of the crowd, they're probably toting pump guns.

Bespoke guns, the confections with elaborate engraving, special wood, etc., were seldom seen in small country towns and rural shooting clubs - they were made for rich city folks who could afford to blow an average workingman's annual wages on 'sport.'

I'll be 70 this year, and as a young man I hunted with old timers who were docs and bankers and proprietors and retired colonels - the kind of small town elite guys who posed in those faded yellow photos. And they all hunted with very ordinary guns.

...and all the time I thought my Sterlingworth was farmer's gun.
Oh well - but!
I just knew, in the back of my mind - it had to have a higher calling than just a farmer's gun.
I'd say your wrong on all counts....but thats okay.
Field grade guns are a touchy subject.
I see them as a rustic piece of the country, and you see 'em as professional grade.
The large lumps of English guns, and high-grades musta been shot by the gods then.

Lowell where is it written that just because you have money you automatically have good taste.

I'm in shambles, my good man j0ey!
Just hanging-on to get to the next stage of my life - retirement is just around the corner, but some years off.
Field grades are about it for now, but I luv 'em!
"Its no shame to be poor, only to dress poorly."
I think.

As to money j0e!
At one time I owned an ASCAP music publishing company of little, or no interest. One day outta the blue, a gent called from LaLa land and offered to buy my catalog for a cash buy-out(no more royalties)hehehe. The Beesley, and with the help of my parents my land followed, soon after - its been all down hill!

"There is beauty in a pitchfork and promise in a corn shovel not found in overheated salons." Now who said that?

jack

You have me! ??????????????
Who!

Wait a minute , wait a minute............Neil Young?

Arghie Fuller.

jack