I began hunting squirrels with a single shot 22 while in high school but wanted a SXS. However, my dad bought me a new 12 gauge single shot Winchester M37 for Christmas so I hunted pheasants with that for the next few years. I still wanted a SXS and ended up trading a rifle I had for a single trigger 12 gauge LC Smith SXS. A beautiful gun to look at but a big mistake, it kept spontaneously discharging. I took it to a so called “gunsmith” and he charged me $75 to “repair” it. Life got in the way after that and I never did get a chance to use it and ended up selling it to a guy I worked with. Fortunately, I gave him a copy of the repair receipt. We went our separate ways until a few years later when we became reacquainted and he told me the story of how the gun, while lying in his lap in a duck blind, had spontaneously fired both barrels with the recoil flinging it into the adjoining swamp. Only because he had the repair receipt and knew that I’d not used the gun since I’d had it repaired saved me from trouble. My next SXS was a 16 gauge Stevens 5100, in terrible cosmetic shape that I purchased for $35. Before I worked it over I took it to the trap range to try out. I was teamed with two other shooters both with beautiful O/U’s. They both looked at me and my SXS with complete disdain. I was embarrassed and mentioned that I hadn’t fired a shotgun in 15 years. They then looked as if someone in their midst (me) had stepped in dog crap. I went on to shoot a respectable 21 while they shot a 7 and an 8. The next round I shot a 22 and they still shot in single digits. I turned around after my last shot and they’d both disappeared! Unfortunately, I sold that old Stevens and it wasn’t until a lifetime friend called in 1998 and asked me to go pheasant hunting with him in SD (using a borrowed shotgun) that I again became hooked on pheasant hunting. In about 2001 purchased a 12 gauge Parker VH. It’s been 18 years now, I sold the Parker years ago and have run through about 20 SXS’s including hammer guns and the whole gauntlet of gauges from a 10 gauge to several .410s. For a while I had several “keepers” including a true 36 gauge percussion SXS, a well-worn British .410 hammer gun SXS, and a super lightweight French 16 gauge guild gun. In 2004 cancer reared its ugly head taking, in 2011, not only my wife/best friend of nearly 42 years but also nearly everything else I owned fighting it. The only SXS I was able to hang on to was my 16 gauge French guild gun. Today the only SXS’s I have are the 16 gauge French guild gun, a 12 gauge Pedersoli SXS ML, a 13 gauge Belgium SXS ML, and a nice svelte .410 SXS that I crafted from an incredibly ugly Brazilian made Rossi (my Sow’s ear project that I posted about back in 2012).
Steve
PS nice thread you started Joe. As you can see the 13 gauge ML I had that you were interested in is still for sale!
