doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com How And When Did You Become A Doublegun Fan?

I hunted the 1959 season with my Mother's RANGER that had been stocked for her by my great uncle --



I then bought a Winchester Model 50 vent rib field gun. Used it for the 1960 into the 1962 season. Sitting out in the cattails in our duck boat, a hunter on the uplands flushed a rooster pheasant that flew right by me and I couldn't shoot at it becase the Model 50 was jammed on a swollen paper shell. When I got back to the landing and my Father and his buddy were picking me up I recounted the story. My Father's comment was "that wouldn't have happened with one of my old double barrels!" I finished out the 1962 season using his 16-gauge AE-Grade Remington. (P136036, stolen out of his house years later) Before the 1963 season started the Model 50 and a Winchester Model 43 .22 Hornet, and some cash were traded off for an Ansley H. Fox HE-Grade Super-Fox with 32- and 28-inch barrels. Before the 1966 season started I also got a straight-gripped A-Grade 12-gauge with 28-inch barrels which has been my favored upland gun ever since. Openning weelend 1966, limit of ducls with the Super-Fox and first Pheasant with the A-Grade --

Anyone that hunts with an AWS has good taste in my book, my handle on other boards is AWS. Due to a quirk of nature I got sidetracked by a GWHP but then I did get sidetracked by shotguns with the barrels on top of each other also but have seen the errors of my ways.

My father gave me an old JC Higgens bolt action 16ga when I got of hunting age but on our first trip to the northwoods to hunt grouse the gun wouldn't fire. We were at my great uncles cabin and an old 10ga hammer shotgun sat in the closet behind the stove and my dad said if he could find shells for it I could use his Rem pump and he'd take the big 10. Suprisingly the local store in Lily WI still had 2 7/8" 10 ga on the shelf, boy I was in seventh heaven. Dad got a limit of grouse and I missed a limit, I thought the old hammer shotgun was magical and it's been downhill from there.

From the beginning I guess. I had a hunting Grandfather and a hunting Uncle, but neither lived in my hometown. Dad loved to fish but was never much of a hunter other than a dove shoot now and then. Far back as I can remember a side by side was my vision of a proper shotgun.

My interest in guns and hunting goes back as far as I can remember. My birthday and Christmas presents were always cowboy pistols or 'Davy Crockett' replicas complete with the outfits. Loved that coonskin hat.

The toys were replaced by the BB-guns and the big yards of our homes (yup, a sort of family compound) on the outskirts of town became my hunting grounds. The chicken pen was my bird field and sparrows were my specialty. Songbirds were technically off limits but the distinction was blurred. The giant oaks around the yard held untold numbers of gray squirrels and rarely some big game in the form of a possum. I recall 4 coveys of wild quail in the immediate area.

I had an elderly maiden Aunt next door who grew up on a plantation on the Tombigbee river in Alabama in the 1870s. She told me tales of the men hunting in the river bottoms, taught me to clean the birds, and then cooked them for my friends and I.

Finally at about age 10 my Mom relented and allowed me to have the standard issue (for boys in my area) Stevens model 94-Y youth sized four-ten. Some may have the opinion that the .410 is too little gun to train a boy to hunt with, but when you're the boy in question and you compare the "real gun" .410 with the series of BB-guns I'd had you'd believe you had some real fire power.

The .410 gave way to my Mom's 20ga Remington deluxe Model 31 pump gun as a hand me down. That particular gun had a bent barrel from the time she fell into a gully up on my Granddad's middle GA farm. Until I figured out where it shot it was useless on a sitting bird but surprisingly deadly on right to left crossers on a dove field. No lead one way double lead required in the opposite direction, and hold to the right on a sitter.

When I was 14 and having little luck killing ducks with the open bored 20ga I became convinced that a proper 12ga gun was necessary to my happiness in life. I had settled on a Stevens 311 but my birthday resulted in a 12ga Ithaca model 37 pumpgun. I used it for 30 years as my regular gun but always had a double in mind.

I got to trading guns at about fourteen. Some of my friends had guns and we'd swap .22 rifles and such. I built up a 'stock' of .22s most of which had something wrong with them, and the .410s my buddies were now ashamed of owning and other odds and ends. That trading resulted in my first sxs, a 12ga B-model Savage Fox which was almost the end of my doublegun fantasy.

We had an old fellow in the country around here who was a sure-nuff gun trader and who had a wonderful Winchester collection. We'd catch rides out to his gun room after school and get fingerprints all over his collection.

I worked up a trade with him, getting rid of the rest of the broke .22s, the .410s including my first real gun, Mom's bent barrel model 31 20ga pump, and that terrible Fox. In exchange I got my first "good gun", an L. C. Smith 20ga field grade. It felt like it had grown out of my hands as a part of my body...and I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with it!

Dismayed, I did not take the time to become used to the "Elsie" or learn to shoot with it and was back to trading. It went along with a 44.40 Colt SA to acquire another double from the gun trader, this time a 16ga English side by side made by Wesley Richards. When I brought it home my Dad said it was too nice for a kid and took it away from me. That seemed fair at the time especially since the Colt SA I traded was his. He shot it for doves the rest of his life.

Except for a useless Spanish .410 sxs I bought out of a barrel full of them while in college in Macon Ga in the '60s, I shot my Model 37 Ithaca pump until my mid forties. A divorce and the suddenly single man experience of having some money no one else was spending for me led me back to my search for the perfect double.

I've been buying them ever since, selling or trading out the surplus in the herd. I've sort of settled on a low grade Parker 16ga which I shoot well enough for quail, an English 12ga E. M. Reilly for dove and a couple of tight choked Ansley Fox's for the local wood ducks and ringnecks. Still buy one now and then...Geo

My first shotgun was a shiny new Winchester 37 single shot I got for Christmas. I was disappointed, I wanted a double, second hand would have been fine. I finally purchased a used LC Smith 12 gauge with a single trigger, the gun would double and also occasionally discharge spontaneously, I had it "fixed" sold it only to learn two years later it wasn't "fixed". Fortunately, I'd given my buyer the repair receipt so he didn't come after me. I've disliked single triggers ever since. My next SXS was a battered 16 gauge Stevens 5100 I purchased in 1980, I fixed the gun up and actually shot it very well, I'm often sorry I sold it. Finally, in about 2000 I bought a 12 gauge Parker VH, that was about 2 dozen doubles ago and I've owned everything from 10 gauge to .410 doubles, several percussion doubles, a Lefaucheux actioned shotgun, it's been downhill ever since. BTW I've shot them all.
Steve

Sorry but I appear to be having computer issues-please remove

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.

I can remember in my early twenties seeing a close up picture of a good double. I saw subtle lines in the metal finish that I thought was poor finishing, but I kept going back for more looks. I slowly figured out that machines couldn't create some of the finishes and contours.

Well done simple is still more interesting to me than bells and whistles. Before that, I had shot a good production over under for a few years that I thought was the cats meow.

I didn't know there was any other shotgun than a double in my fishing village. No one subscribed to the sporting magazines; only three newspapers came in the daily mail. Around 11 or 12 a relative who had gone off to the Boston states returned one fall with a pump. A marvel, but I remained virtuous until I bought one of the first Winchester Model 50s to enter the province, then an 1100, succumbing to the clickety-clacks. Nearly 20 years ago---in my 60s--- I yearned to go back to the doubles of my village: Stevens, Tobins, Parkers, Ithacas, JABCs. Reading of those guns here set me off. I am grateful.

Although I grew up in the country on a small farm, my father was not a hunter. I had a .22 bolt action single I shot a good bit, mostly at squirrels as far as game was concerned, but an occasional rabbit. One thanksgiving an uncle carried me rabbit hunting & let me use a gun he had, a H&R small frame 28 gauge single. My dad had a 16 ga single Hopkins & Allen which I shot occasionally, but he wouldn't let me use it much as its sear was worn & was very touchy about cocking. I was actually about 16 by now & got the itch for a shotgun of my own. My dad kinda insisted I get a double. Ended up with a pre WWI J Stevens Arms & Tool Co 12 ga, 30" barreled double.
Hunted it a couple of years & getting too big for my breeches decided I needed something more suitable for the upland shooting I did. Bough a brand spanking new 870 pump 20 gauge with 28" Mod barrel. Although I really teried hard for about two more seasons I very quickly realized I just didn't shoot that pump as well as I did the old Stevens even though it was actually a less suitable gun for my purposes. Ended up trading the 870 in for a Parker Trojan & never looked back. This was about 1959 & from that day to this I have hunted with nothing (when a shotgun was to be used) except a SxS double. Well I'll take that back I did do a bit of hunting with a hammer drilling for a bit (16/16/9.3x72R).

There was only a Sterlingworth and Ithaca Lewis remaining in the gun cabinet after my dad and brother grabbed their guns in 1968. I still remember the first mallard hen I shot with the Sterly from my homemade duck skiff in the Horicon Marsh. 45 years later and I am still using it.

This is like a disease! It just keeps getting more expensive as I get older. I started with American guns that just never fit me well unless I restocked them and then I moved on to longer stocked, lighter English guns. I am not sure there is a cure or remedy for this illness (except for one thing and I would rather not go there).