My father-in-law is a snowbird - half the year in Illinois and the other half in Arizona. Two snowbird seasons back he walked in with an old Springfield double-barrel, double-trigger side-by-side and handed it to my oldest son. He said something like, "this gun belonged to my grandfather, and now it belongs to you." This gun is not quite 100 years old, but we figured it's very close to that. Fast foward to a few months ago, I really liked the metal on this piece, so other than cleaning it up a little, I left that part mostly alone. I then refinished the stock, shaped-in a new recoil pad, called RST for some low-pressure shells, then got my boy to shoot a little. He couldn't miss the clay pigeons. First weekend of September I took him on his first dove hunt, and you can see him posing with his first bird below. We think it's awesome that he can say he took his first bird with his great, great grandfathers shotgun! Now...if I can only find someone to hand me a shotgun like that. It fits me like a glove! Can't wait for quail season!!

That's GREAT!

Very cool.

Thank you! You may notice by his expression, he felt some remorse shooting that bird. I told him if he didn't, I would think something was wrong with him. That is part of hunting. We'll see how he does with his cow elk hunt in a couple of weeks...