# If guns could talk



## campfire (Sep 9, 2007)

I had a lot of fun researching my grandfathers guns (see "Grandpa's gun" in this section) and sharring the interesting thngs I found with you folks. Guns hardly ever wear out and get discarded like cars or appliances. They are bought and sold and handed down from generation to generation. We tend to hang on to them more for their nostalgia, sentiment and memories than for their functionality. Guns sometimes have more family history in them than houses. And sometimes if guns could talk they could relate stories better than the movies. I wouldn't mind hearing some of your stories and histories about guns. I have some more stories about my Grandfather and guns but lets here from some of the rest of you first. We don't need to confine these stories to guns, either. Lots of outdoor gear is steeped with history and stories like knives,tents, stoves, lanterns and even old trucks and ATVs.


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## GaryFish (Sep 7, 2007)

So I wonder if our grandchildren are going to feel nostalgic about that synthetic stock'd stainless steel rifle? Not nearly as romantic as the hand rubbed walnut stock and hand tooled leather strap is it. Good stuff.

I have an old 12 gauge pump gun - 1906 - belonged to my great-grandfather who drove coach between St. George and Vegas back in the day. Still the original stock and blueing, which is mostly worn off. It has a laced-on leather kick-pad. Its not safe to fire any more but still great to keep around. And I use the 30-06 my Dad used for years and handed down to me. Its an old mauser action, with a custom stock and militry style leather sling. It still shoots great - took 3 deer and an elk with it last year. Gotta love that kind of stuff.


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## Texscala (Sep 8, 2007)

I have an old 30 06 that my Father in Law brought down from Washington State (it was his fathers). My father in law tells stories of walking through the woods in Washington and as a careless youth banging up the stock. My grandfather in law was supposedly dead on with the gun.

I took my first buck a few years ago with this rifle and have also taken 2 cows with it. We have been to Washington for grandpas 90th b day and while there he told me it was good to see the gun being used and enjoyed and told me to keep it and enjoy it as long as I could.

Grandpa Taylor is now in American Fork and we visit him from time to time and he always asks to hear stories of my outdoor adventures.

For this reason I can't imagine ever refinishing the stock even though it could use it. Each scratch is a little story.


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## ACHY (Oct 18, 2007)

When I was growing up the only deer rifle that ever existed (from my perspective) was my dad's Winchester '94 .30-30. Dad always took us hunting with him, even though I'm sure it was a handful to have three young boys tagging along on the whole trip. I'll always remember one trip where my brother sat down on a prickly pear just as my dad spotted a buck. He made sure the deer was dead before he bothered to start pulling cactus spines from my brother's rear end. 

When I turned 14, Dad gave me his gun and leather saddle case and it's the only big game rifle I have used. 

Another time I remember, after I had been gifted the gun, we were sitting around the deer camp one afternoon when someone took a milk jug full of water a few hundred yards up the hill for some just-for-fun-shooting. Everyone else had fancy scoped rifles in .30-06, .308, 7mm, and .270 calibers but it took my open sight .30-30 to break that milk jug.


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## deadicatedweim (Dec 18, 2007)

I was lucking to have a Grandpa that had lots of different guns and a love for shooting them often and reloading. I loved his .225 from when I was just able to shoot. One funny experience is my grandpa lived in Flagstaff AZ and would cut firewood all summer long for the winters. Every time we headed to the forrest it consisted of cutting the trees and loading 2 or 3 trucks with wood. We would finish around lunch time and he would always have bologna sandwhiches and a coke or pepsi for me and his friends. I remeber my grandpa had a cola scent to him from drinking it so much. There was a time his friend brought his TC 30-06 single shot pistol and they propped me up on a tall log to shoot my cola can. I was on my tippy toes to see over the log so when I would pull the trigger the gun would roll me backwards on to my back. They would just laugh and give me another bullet. I shot about 5 saplings until I finally hit the cola can and then they teased me the forrest service was going to give me a ticket for harvesting the live trees. I miss those days.


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## Loke (Sep 7, 2007)

A neighbor of mine had an old Colt Peacemaker. The first time I saw it, I could tell it was a "black powder" model from across the room. After talking to its owner I found out that it was made in 1874, and was shipped to the Army. They never got it. It was part of a shipment that was hijacked. I would love to hear the stories that it could tell. The grips had been reshaped to fit some one's smaller hand. The finish was mostly gone, but it looked as if it had been cared for. It was out of time, and was in no shape to shoot.


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## proutdoors (Sep 24, 2007)

I feel lucky, as I have several that carry amazing stories. I have a double barreled muzzle loader shotgun that my great, great, grandfather brought across the plains in the 1840's. I had a gunsmith age it around 1805. I have a bamboo fly rod my grandfather got back in 1941 that I learned how to fly fish with in Island Park Idaho. I have a .308 that I killed my first B&C buck with that my great grandfather gave to my dad. My great grandfather helped start the first conservation group in Idaho Falls. Each of these hold stories that I treasure, and no amount of money would be enough to let go of these family stories.


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## Finnegan (Sep 7, 2007)

The stupidest thing I ever did (and I've done some incredibly stupid things in my day) was in the mid-80's. I was in a serious wreck and broke my neck. I was unable to work for months because I was wearing a cervical halo, so I was flat broke. I could have borrowed from family, but my pride got the best of me and I sold my gun collection instead. I must have been in a medicated stupor or something because I figured I could just replace the guns when I got my insurance settlement. Time dragged on and by the time I finally got my settlement, buying guns wasn't even on the list of priorities.

I eventually got back on my feet, of course. I replaced my Savage .06, but it wasn't the same gun that I'd hauled hay for an entire summer to earn the money to buy.

I replaced my Ithaca feather-light 12 gauge, but it didn't have the custom stock that I'd made myself and it still doesn't. I don't have the tools anymore.

Never replaced the Winchester 30.30 that I used to kill my first buck, that had the long gouge in the stock from when the horse fell with it in a snow storm, that I'd used as my model in the fabrication class that I took, training to become a gunsmith. And I never replaced the Ruger 357 that I won from a punchboard in Mickelson's cafe in Nephi, back when Mickelson's was in it's original location. There were others, but you get my drift.

A few years after that, my dad died and I inherited a few of his guns. We divided his collection between 6 of us kids, so we each got 2 or 3. One that I got was a Fox 12 gauge double barrel. And when, a few years after that, I was reunited with my estranged son, (long story there), I gave it to him. We sat with that shotgun between us for several hours as I told him stories about his grandpa. Made him cry. Me, too, I guess. But there was a pre-condition I set on him when I gave him that shotgun. I made him promise that no matter what happens, he will never sale that gun.


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## NHS (Sep 7, 2007)

If guns could talk, I'd like to hear the story this one could tell.








It was my Grandpa's. When he passed away in 2003, it came into my possession. I wish I knew more of the details. He never wrote them down. When his brother died in Europe during WWII, the army shipped his possessions home. My Grandpa found this rifle action in his brother's possessions. He used that action to build this .243. I don't know anything about it other than it is a German Mauser.








The interesting thing is the double-set trigger. I have not seen another Mauser that has a double trigger.








It is fun rifle to have and it will never leave the family. I used it a few years ago to take my first ever pronghorn....just another chapter in this gun's history.


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## longbow (Mar 31, 2009)

Man, this kills me to write, But if my guns could talk they would say "please return us to Chuck". My second wife was a gun collector, That's right, she collected her first husband's guns and four of mine. Her first husband's were his dad's old pre64 30-06 winchester, an old ruger 22 pistol and a newer 357. That old Win meant alot to him.
My four guns included a Marlin 22 that my dad gave me when I passed hunter safety, a Ithica 12ga featherweight, a model700 17rem and our family's most prized gun, the gun my dad carried in the war. Somehow he and his two buddies brought their rem 03A3 30-06s back with them. My dad gave it to me when I killed my first deer with it at age 14. 
They were the only ones she could get her hands on so I still have my other guns, Wbys, Rems ect.
I've given my boy a few guns and he treasures those. I gave him one of my stainless 257 wbys last year when he killed a nice buck with it in Colorado. It was all he could do to keep his tears back. Now that memory goes with that gun forever. Hopefully he'll tell his boy about the hunt as he passes the gun on to him.


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## campfire (Sep 9, 2007)

Sorry to resurrect this old thread but.........I'm old and I want to talk about old stuff so it seems only fitting to resurrect this old thread. Some of you may remember that my maternal grandfather was a piece office. He was a Carbon County deputy/town marshal of the mining camp of Kenilworth a few miles north of price. In about the mid 1950s when they closed the old boarding house next door my grandfather scavenge an old wardrobe from the boarding house and made it into a homemade gun cabinet. It stood in his garage until shortly after his death in 1972 then made it's way to my father's garage in Kamas. On a recent work day at his place my son and I brought it back. It took some elbow grease to clean it up but it is finally settled into my basement. It could use a coat of paint but at best it would look like an old homemade gun cabinet and it's beauty is in it's history and nostalgia. So for now I think I will just leave it just as my grandfather made it including the old powder boxes he used for shelves. Before the world was dominated by ones and zeros and the internet, Independent Coal and Coke payed it's employees in cash. That meant that on payday there was a lot of cash laying around. Every Friday my grandfather and three other armed guards would drive from Kenilworth to Helper, pick up the parole and drive back to the mine office in Kenilworth. During "payday" one of these guards would sit on the balcony of the boarding house across the street from the mine office to the south. Another would sit on the front porch of the company Doctor's house across the street and up the hill from the office to the north and west. The third would sit in the window of the tipple (where the coal was processed) across the street to the north and east, triangulating the office with rifle fire. They were each armed with a long barreled (10 shot) lever action 30-30. My grandfather spent payday inside the office armed with his service revolver and a 12 gauge shotgun. When the company stopped making parole in cash there was no need for this payday ritual but my grandfather maintained possession of the guns that eventually became a forgotten resource of the company. One had disappeared before my earliest recollection but for most of my younger life two of the rifles stood in my grandfather's homemade gun cabinet. One had an octagon barrel and the other had a round barrel. I think sometime when I was serving overseas on an LDS mission he sold the octagon barreled one for reportedly $10. Yes that is with one zero. As much as it pains me to write this, to him it was just an old gun that he no longer had need of. He hunted with the other one until he was too old to hunt and shortly after his death my uncle took it and I think eventually gave it to my cousin who has been living in Minnesota for many years and we have not kept in touch. I would give a month's pay for that rifle to again take it's rightful place in my grandfathers gun cabinet in my basement but I have to confess that I know nothing about it's location or condition. But I have his gun cabinet, his shotgun that is still very functional but is now decorating my entryway and his service revolver shown below for the photo.


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## Bax* (Dec 14, 2008)

way to be campfire! 8) 

I would have done the same thing. it looks like your grandfather put a lot of work into that cabinet, and I am sure he would have been flattered to know that you wanted it


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## mikevanwilder (Nov 11, 2008)

I will also appologize for bringing this up again, but have a few stories to share. Guns are very odd in that most people don't just discard them after buying a new one like with most objects. Right now I don't have any that have been passed down, my father still has all the guns my grandpa and great grandpa had. But there is one gun that will always have a place in my heart and head. My dads rem 25-06 when I was 10 or 11 we were out shooting at an old dumping site just west of Huntington Ut, and I was on an old mattress trying to shoot that gun I couldn't see clearly through the scope so I placed the butt under my arm pit. well I pulled the trigger and bam took the scope right in the middle of my forehead. I bled for ever and was so embarrased that I had to make up stories to tell my friends. I love that gun. Until I get those I am starting my own stories with the guns I have and hopefully can pass down to my boy when he's older. I have a friend for one reason or another has sold or pawned many of the guns he has had and now regrets everyone. I told him I would sell my TV, DVD player, cd collection, computer, car, before any gun I have.


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