Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors OT my local gunshop 75 years ago !

Not so much a question of how much small game but rather the fact that the country was a lot more rural back then and a lot more folks hunted.

Darn cool! Spent some time in North Woodstock, as my wife has family there. Sure the men passed through that shop! Hildus Knudsen, on Lost River Rd. Had cabins for rent. That place sure did change a lot! Seemed like all of a sudden, mid 1980's.

I have to tell you back in the day around here,lots of people could only afford 1 gun !so a shotgun in the brush with buck or slug was their deer gun also. Shiff was one of the few guys that actually sent out a mailer and sold guns thru the mail.I think if you look at the far upper left in this photo you can see a row of savage rifles. Im going to try and get a better photo.




Also heres a bunch of real rifle loonies that were friends of Shiff,this photo was part of his collection.They were the real shooters of the day.

Don that last picture is very interesting. I can not blow it up enough to see the front mount very well but the rear looks like the one Gene just aquired?

I couldn't tell either ,but the barrel appears to be round,so im thinking regular target scope blocks. here is another photo from my Shiff collection, a pair that would beat a full house!

I already looked at those mounts, it's the first thing that caught my eye in the picture. They are not his make and are much later, I think it's a Fecker scope and those look like Fecker mounts, 'Old Gun Scopes' says Fecker started in the mid 20's. The bump on the top of the front mount is not a hinge but houses a spring loaded grooved plunger that rides on a rib on the scope, this scope is designed to be sit in the bottom of the front mount.

I have a similar set I was going to get a picture of ....somewhere....

Don thanks for sharing these.

I think that was the general condition of most the country. That, and coupled with the perspective that firearms were pretty much something more akin to a tool than anything else. We are lucky to live in a time when there is such a surplus of wealth that allows us acquire an abundance of material wealth.

Don

Did you just come into these? They're amazin' to say the least. And the one with Roberts and Pope talking! At Walnut Hill no less. Historic. Thanks for posting them.

Steve, i got them a few weeks ago, i probably have around 300 photos that came from Shiff's scrapbook, most are different firearms,and a lot were taken by Ned Roberts and sent to Shiff. I also got all the correspondence from the chief of police at the time,with shiffs heirs and the lawyers involved, hell i even got the old deed from when shiff bought the property in 1920!! Theres a lot of muzzleloader pictures,target rifles and one of a kind firearms. Lots of colt pictures from pattersons,up thru different devolepment pictures to the 1847 Walker,with lots of prototype pictures. mind boggling for sure. Don

In the Walnut Hill photo it looks like we have two Ballard’s, Pope has an 85 Winchester, I’m not sure what the guy to his left has (might be a 1903 T), and the guy in the fedora at the far right has an 03. Who knows what the scopes are? Who knows who all the guys are?

Thanks Don, nice acquisition.

The last names are written on the back,some are quite famous. clockwise from far left.

Chet Moore
John Shaw
Stevens
Rudolph Tharnish
lucian Cary
Elliott
Dickerson
Kelley
Dwyer, in the white shirt,the last man to the right was unnamed.Lucian Cary wrote quite a few stories for the Saturday evening post,and was the Gun editor for True magazine for 20 years.He wrote quite a few stories ,called the J.M.Pyne stories based on Harry M. Pope. as the subject.

When I was about ten years old, my father ordered some Fawcett books on fishing. The price was the same for five books as four, so he ordered "Lucian Cary on Guns" for me as the fifth. I just about wore through the pages with my eyes, reading that book over and over. That is what set me on the primrose path of guns.

Cary, Is quite the story teller, I'm reading the J.M.Pyne stories for the second time! Heres another famous gunsmith from days gone by,another picture from the album.

Gun Digest ran the J.M Pyne stories in the 60's. Great stories.

When I saw the pic I thought that was Lucian Cary. I'm sure Harry was merely posing with that High Wall (and yes it wears a Fecker scope, identical to the one I have on my M52), because Harry Pope injured his left wrist 30 or so years before that photo was taken and gave up competitive shooting after that as he didn't have the strength in the wrist to hold a heavy rifle through the course of a long day on the firing line. He was 75 in the picture. He died in 1949.

I too revel in Cary's J.M.Pyne stories. I have a book containing all of them, with stories by Cary about how he got into precision shooting and made friends with Pope in the process. I guess I know what my bedtime reading will be tonight!

If I walked into Shiff the Gun Man's place today you would find me still there tomorrow.

I posted these pictures in the muzzle loader forum,but i might as well keep my rambling on here. these are 3 pictures taken by Ned Roberts on june 22,1940. The pictures are of Elmer Wolf's gunshop,and homestead in Thurmont Md.







as you can see old Elmer was a snappy dresser,just like myself!!

Distinct similarity! Somehow I think the Vault would be cozier in the wintertime. But on the other hand Elmer had a Model A Ford to pose behind.

Ya still running a model "A" 19 years after the last one was built,ol Elmer was pretty frugal!!