Home Forums Birds & Dogs Shotguns When you were a kid, what shotgun did you want most ???

I hunted with various "family" guns for a number of years, so by age 10 I "knew" exactly what I wanted......a 12 ga. L.C. Smith or at least an A.H. Fox.

That winter my mother's father died and left me a FINE French double (not even sure of the maker) in 16 ga. that he had brought home from WWII. It wasn't a 12, but it was beautiful with scroll engraving covering the action and even ejectors. Unfortunately I only hunted with it one season before all of our guns were lost in a fire.

As soon as the insurance money came in my father went hunting for new guns (before even buying clothes...he had his priorities straight). He explained that the money had to buy guns for the entire family, so L.C. Smiths and Fox's were not an option. So I told him a 870 pump or Ithaca would do just as well (for some reason I never liked the Model 12....and still don't own one).

He came home with and presented me with a beautiful 870 in....20 ga. I "knew" I really needed a 12, but at 11 years old I had to settle for what I got. Somehow I managed to kill several truckloads of small game and a half-dozen deer over the next few years with that "too small" 20.

When I was 17 I got into duck hunting and just had to have a 12ga. Magnum (or so I thought at the time). I went looking for another 870, but instead discovered the only semi-auto shotgun I'd ever wanted.....a Belgium Browning A-5....and in Magnum chambering!!

I didn't have the cash or trade to own this gun, but it's owner took pity on me (having known me since birth) and allowed me to "work out" the difference on his farm and store. I still own that gun today.

I've been pretty lucky to own almost all of the guns I wanted as a kid....even if it did take me a lot of years to accumulate them.