Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Guns with stories!

There is a collection here locally that has many "proofed" guns. Pretty interesting. Each gun as been researched and "proven" to be owned by certain people and many have the history of the animals taken.

One may have been owned by the "duke" of some obscure country and he took and elephant with it in 1929, elephant had tusk weighing such and such......then took a tiger, etc.

Really really cool stuff worth millions. The cases and history behind the weapons are stored in climate controlled rooms.

I have and still hunt with my Grandfather's M70 30Gov't06 that he won in a big buck contest back in 1937.

There is a pretty good story that goes along with the horns. Back in '37 they were dirt poor and could not afford to even have the horns mounted. So the operator of the sporting goods store said he would mount them on a board if he could display them in his store. There they sat for over 40 years, a few changes of location and ownership until the store owner passed away and they closed the store. I got a wild hair to see if I could find them. Looked up the owners name, found his widow and gave her a call. Sure enough she still had the horns in an old metal shed in the back yard. I talked grandma into driving me over there (I was 12 or 13 at the time) and after explaining the story she gladly passed the horns over. I can still see the expression on my grandfathers face when I came through the door with that big old mule deer rack. He had a giant smile on his face and ask where in the world I found that?

Before he passed he gave me the rifle. Before my grandmother passed she gave me the horns to go with it. I still have both. The rifle still gets hunted and the horns are on the wall behind me in my office.

I have a rifle that belonged to one of the US Judges of the Nuremberg trials. James Morris was the Chief Justice of the ND Supreme Court and was asked by Truman to be one of the US Judges @ Nuremberg. The story I was told is that his wife bought the rifle for him while they were there. My dad's uncle was the Law Librarian for the ND Supreme Court and was given the rifle by Morris. Dad's cousins didn't hunt so dad's uncle gifted the rifle to him. I inherited the rifle when my dad passed.

It's a very nice trim light rifle. Pretty sure it's a Brno VZ24. It's equipped with Double-set triggers, 2 flip-up open sights (100 and 200yds) and a 4x Ajax in claw mounts. It's chambered in 7x57, and, while probably sacrilege, the load I shoot through it is 120gn Barnes TSX @ 3050 to basically approximate a 7-08. My dad got the rifle from his uncle ~30yrs ago and shot some Federal 140's the rifle was sighted in for. The 120's I load didn't require any movement of the scope to be dead-on @ 100yds. Lord only knows how many times the scope has been on/off showing folks the claw-mounts, enough times that I'm certain it'll return to zero I guess. No changes have been made to the scope's elevation adjustment nor the base's windage in 30+yrs.

I wish it wasn't so doggone expensive to have another scope fitted for the claw-mounts as I'd put a more modern scope on and hunt with it quite a bit more.

I'm doing the same, handing down the ones I inherited. Most are unremarkable just family history.

I wonder what happened to Davey Crockette's "Old Betsy"?

Same here.

In the early 70's, a good friend of mine who was the county sheriff brought a Polish Radom by the house to see how it came apart to clean. Gun had brown splotched plexiglass grips with a foil backing. A few questions were answered this way: "German officer didn't have any more need for it". "Took the plexi out of a crashed German fighter with the pilot still in it". "Foil was dropped by our bombers to fool German radar". That was about all I could get out of him. It was hard to get anything out of those WWII vets. My uncle clammed up for 45 years until my sister got him to talking about being on Guadalcanal...

Great thread. Just when you think this place is destined for the toilet something like this pops up. I don't have anything w a story other than family heirlooms. I do have a family secret though. My bil great grand father and his boy got into a fight on the farm. The boy hit him w a grease gun over the head and the wound got grease into it. The grandfather ended up dying over the infection. Also had a great uncle die in 8in of water fishing at our local lake. Passed out drunk.

Great story!

I have my Grandpaw's 25 he carried in his "grip" for 50 years as a RR engineer. He ran some of the most well known passenger trains in the Eastern US.

My walk-about rifle up here is my Dad's 1927 manufactured M94 in 30-30 (marked 30WCF). I killed my first white-tail with it in 1966 in ND, and not a thing with it since. A couple brothers had it for 25 years and killed some deer with it in Montana and Idaho, before I re-acquired it about 25 years ago.

I refinished wood and metal, which were no longer in good shape, and replaced the side-mount Leupold 3X with the original aperature sight that was on it during my growing up.

I have the Arasaka Type 38 carbine my great uncle brought back from WWII. He took it off a Japanese soldier during a landing in which his CB unit was landed in the first wave rather than a later one. His daughter asked if he killed the soldier and he replied, "well, he didn't give it to me."

My great uncle was a tough old bird, he threatened to come back from the dead and haunt me if I joined the wrong branch of the military. I believed him.

There’s an old double barrel, black powder shotgun that, according to family lore, belonged to Ben Lilly. We have Lilly’s in our family back in the 1800’s.

The shotgun is named “Ole Spider”, and has a small piece blown out at the breech end of the right barrel. It blew out on my great grandfather, striking him in the wrist. I don’t recall if it was a barrel plug, an overcharge, or just what.

My cousin has the old gun now……hopefully it continues to remain in the family for many more years! memtb

That is very cool! I doubt any man EVER killed more bears and mountain lions then ole Ben Lilly.

I’ve got the book “ The Ben Lilly Legend” by noted TX author J Frank Dobie.
I’ve just about worn the covers off that book I’ve read it so many times.

chlinstructor, Thanks, I think that it’s pretty neat as well. I‘ve heard some stories about Ben being somehow related, though when my wife tried to do some genealogy research…..the Lillys found in the family had a different spelling.

Probably doesn’t mean much though, a lot of name spelling changed over the years. Heck, my last name changed spelling right after The War of Northern Aggression! memtb

I've got an elderly 12 gauge double barrel I inherited from my father in law- - - -one that was used on Horseshoe lake in southern Illinois goose hunting. It's only got one hammer, as the left barrel is blown out a couple of inches ahead of the chamber. It was used as a single shot for several years after that- - - -probably with the same kind of smokeless high brass shells that ruined the other barrel. Did I mention that the Damascus steel is pretty visible on the ruined barrel? The original owner's name is carved DEEP into the stock in letters about an inch high.

Not mine, but a member here. Has a pistol that was owned by AL Capone. I got to see it and handle it! Way Cool!

I dunno, but if it survived the looting that took place at the Alamo after the battle, it's probably a hanging lump of rust in some adobe somewhere in the state of Chihuahua!
....or the barrel was turned into a wrecking bar by a enterprising Tejano somewhere in San Antonio, down on the Sou' Side!

.....OR.....to insure the Alamo defenders firearms WOULD NOT be used against them, it went into a bonfire.....THEN....some enterprising Tejano scraped up the remaining brass/copper and the iron was sold as scrap iron or repurposed as horse shoes or iron wagon wheel tires.

When I was a kid (preteen), my Uncle was the Parish Sherrif back in Louisiana. When we’d go out in the country to visit, he’d let me play with his gun collection. No ammo. My favorites were a M3 Grease gun and a German MP38 submachine gun.

Always wanted a Grease Gun when I was a kiddo.