Hey Dr. Drewbie-by chance, have you ever read "Hemingway's Guns" by my friends Silvio et al--?? Somehow Hem felt his 1928 era M12 field 12 gauge with 30" solid rib full choked barrel has "worn out" so he ditched it (like he did his wives I guess) in Idaho around 1958 and bought another M12 12 gauge from a hotel bellboy at the Sun Valley Lodge- there are some fotos in that great book showing him carrying it afield- with his pal Bud Purdy wringing the neck on a deceased mallard. They traced his original M12 after his death in 1961, through G&H at Abercombie&Fitch- was sold there-it had been restocked, not sure if it was ever reblued- but after his accolade to that M12 in "True At First Light" in which he finished off a wounded leopard in a mangrove tangle near Kenya with the same "Perfect Repeater" hard to understand how he could let go of it later on at the ebb of his life--you can never wear out a Model 12, a lifetime of shooting, as a 1957 ad showing a hunter with a M12, in waders with a boxcar behind him and a big ass pile of red empty AA hulls--Foxie
