Sad

Cabela's evidently closed the Elmer Keith museum and now some of the stuff is being auctioned off by the family. Chris S

will come out of it. All of us gun crazies will someday pass on just as that great man, Elmer Keith did. Great guns don't suffer from being put back into circulation. Although museums are good places to see general examples of guns, I sometimes feel sad to see personal guns suffocating behind glass.
Maybe I'm goofy, but I would like to think that the guns I prize will be loved by somebody else after I can't use them anymore.
What a mawkish thought. Back to the single malt.

Mike

Mike, I too agree that guns should be handed down to someone who will cherish them and use them until it's time to pass them on again. I inherited some old weapons from my Grandmother who kept them after her father and then later her husband had passed away. I treasure those to this day and only hope they will find their way to someone else who can treasure them after me. Chris S

I kind of had the same experience. After my grandfather died, my grandmother gave me the Luger he brought back from WWI. He had told me the story about it earlier, but I never appreciated it until I became a hunter.
He was in the Big Red One. The food was not very great since we didn't do MRE's then. Meat, especially, was sent in steel drums in brine. The cooks soaked it and boiled it. Yum. Anyway, one day the company cook called him over and said, "Iheard you are a hunter." He said sure, he was a coon hunter in Iowa. The cook said the woods around camp were full of the big Red Deer, and would he like to try his luck. Grandpa said sure, but bullets were counted when troops were back of the line. The cook had connections in supply and could get three shells a day for them with no accounting.
So, Grandpa Hugo (a first generation American from German immigrants) took to hunting. He would shoot a deer, gut it and hang it. The cooks helpers would would go retrieve it, and the cook made wonderful beef stew and pot roast and sausage with the meat. All the other units couldn't figure where his company came up with such good chow.
One day, Hugo spotted another hunter in the forest. A German junior officer. He got the drop on him, and since they both spoke German, they came to an agreement. If the officer would give Hugo his Luger and all the shells for his Mauser, Hugo would let him go back to his lines instead of a prisoner of was camp. Easy deal.
So, that's where my Luger came from. Same German engineering as their cars. Too many small parts, ridiculous trigger mechanism, and terrible trigger pull. But, it's cute. And it's mine. And, I still shoot it occasionally.

Mike