Yours is a year older than mine...

by Paul , Friday, January 10, 2025, 14:47 (7 days ago) @ AaronB

The last time I saw my Grandpa I had a feeling it would be the last time, and I also knew that as a son of the youngest daughter I did not figure in the will at all. I asked him if he'd sell me his old Winchester 94 and he said, "No. You just take it with you. Let me look around, I've got a box of shells for it somewhere. I never could get that rifle to shoot anyway." So it went with me. A few years later I was in Raton, shooting the old rifle and having fits with it. Grandpa's comment about not being able to get it to shoot was in the back of my mind so I asked Mic McPherson to give it a try. He lobbed a few rounds at the "banana rock" and told me, "There's nothing wrong with that rifle!". SO I tightened the nut holding the stock and squeezing the trigger and it DID shoot quite alright! Grandpa never got a deer with that rifle, don't think he ever did more than shoot a few rounds through it. But I got my first three whitetail with it. It was built in 1957 and I don't recall where Grandpa said he got it. But as far back as I remember it lived in his closet "just in case".

After he passed away my aunt gave me the old 22 that all the grandkids "rode hard and put away wet". "It's been shot out!" was the consensus and no one else seemed to be interested in it. I hosed down the bolt with brake cleaner, scrubbed the barrel and got it working OK. I tried it on the rams at Raton and once I figured how to hold the tiny barleycorn front sight in the hugemongous rear V sight I managed to knock them down regularly, holding on their heads.

Then there's the old cut down 67 Winchester that Rich Hoch gave me. He'd cut it down for his grandkids and modified the bolt to work with an old Mossberg 4X scope he cobbled onto it with a side mount. That rifle won't group for sour apples, but it's first shot accurate which is what you want with an old singleshot 22 anyway. I took a lot of prairie dogs, muskrats and other vermin with it the year we lived out west. It rode on the floor boards behind the front seat of the car and I carried a few rounds of 22 LR in my shirt pocket. Going down the ditch bank I'd see a prairie dog, reach back for the rifle and poke it out the window then load a shell from my pocket. Got quite a few that way.

Not a one of those rifles is "valuable" to the world around us, but the memories and provenance are where they hold value to me.