COLUMN: Sadly some old favorite guns had to be sold out of necessity

Mostly Colts and Winchesters, but the occasional Kennedy, Sharps, Marlin, Ballard and so forth. Problem is, someone else always wanted those gems worse than I did and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Poor boys can’t afford to be choosey.

Fortunately, there are only a couple of those items that I truly regret parting company with. One being a short-barreled 1881 Marlin in 45-70 that I was hoodwinked out of 35 years ago by someone who pretended to be a friend (I found out later that it was very valuable), and the other being a Winchester high wall that I purely loved, but had to sell to pay the bills. And don’t forget the Bob Edgar engraved Colt that had to be sold during the same time period as the high wall. 

This disaster (the engraved Colt .45) occurred during a time when the major magazine I was on staff with was bought out by a competitor and then canceled, as in finis, whereby my income became canceled. But no sweat, though, because Sandi was working full time, right?

Not quite. Also during this period Sandi’s job was undergoing transitions, what with one store being bought out by another and eventually the owners closed the doors forever. Again, with quite an effect on our income stream. It is, at times like this, that one relearns those painful childhood lessons that, in the end, anything material that you own is expendable, regardless of your emotional investment in it.

Actually, it bothered me more to lose the high wall than the engraved Colt .45 revolver. The rifle was a standard model Winchester high wall, model of 1885. It was in caliber 38-55, with a half octagon and half round barrel. A number three, I believe. It was a classic example of 19th century workmanship, still in beautiful shape and wonderfully accurate with my cast bullet hand loads. (Regardless of collector status or whatever, I shoot my firearms period.) A gentleman from Powell gave me a more than fair price for it and it was gone.

Funny thing about sentiment, it always seems to magnify as time goes by. Things you may have cared little for at one time suddenly loom large in your memory 20 years later. You know, old cars that were a wreck, a worn-out favorite suit or pair of jeans, maybe even an old girlfriend or boyfriend. Time seems to erase all the negatives and memory tends to enhance what few positives that some things had. My Grams used to call it wishful thinking. 

Still, I carried that slender Angel of Death across most of Wyoming and parts of Montana for several big game seasons and it never let me down. It wore open buck horn style rear sights and a bead front, so I reserved my shots to under 250 yards, but again, that rifle never let me down. Thing is, you had to be a hunter as well as a shooter.

The WCF 38-55 is a great big game cartridge and also a very good target round in its class. Around the turn of the 19th century, when true Shuetzen matches – mostly offhand shooting at 200 yards with open sights and vernier sights – were all the rage, the 38-55 was a well-respected match caliber, similar in esteem as to what the 6.5s enjoy currently.  Shooting a 260 grain to 320 grain plain based cast lead bullet over a decent charge of smokeless, I think it was IMR 3031, that rifle won me several 20 rod shooting  competitions back in the day .

The very first pronghorn I collected with that old high wall was east of Muddy Gap. Out in the sagebrush country that runs from there clean to Nebraska, or so it seems when you’re hunting on foot. It was mid-morning and I’d hiked in several miles trying to find a tall and heavy-horned buck I’d seen the day before. I was tired and more than a little discouraged. The sun was up and hot, it being early September if I remember correctly. 

I’d been following a dusty little pathway through the hills, a trail covered with a multitude of pointed toe little tracks, but never spotted the goat-style varmints that laid down all of those prints. 

Coming around the edge of a low hill, I spotted a bedded buck pronghorn with a decent-sized set of horns on the opposite hillside resting. Not exactly the one I was looking for, but when hunting I’ve never refused a decent offer by Dame Fortune. Besides, he was facing out across the prairie away from the direction I was walking and had no idea I was even in the neighborhood. Also, the slight whisper of a breeze was in my favor.

The rifle seemingly rose of its own volition, but when I eared the hammer back, the buck’s head swiveled in my direction as he rose from his bed in the sagebrush, presenting the perfect, classic broadside shot. He must have taken about 60 steps down across the small saddle in front of him before he collapsed in the knee-high sagebrush that dotted the prairie. Not a tremendous head as pronghorn trophies go, somewhere around 15 inches and fairly heavy, with bases it took both of my hands to encircle, I was still quite pleased. 

That is until I remembered my truck was parked about five miles away at the end of an old BLM two track. Regardless, I slipped out of my pack frame and slipped a fresh cartridge into the high wall (in case of attack by a blood-maddened badger or an irate group of PETA supporters) and spent the next hour butchering the antelope critter.

Rock chuck, coyote (there were two), picket pens or that one antelope, the rifle never missed its target if it had hair or fur on it. But the day I shot that buck is what I think about when I think about that rifle. After becoming more solvent, financially, I spent several years trying to locate a replacement I could afford. Failing that, I finally bought an Unberti clone in 40-65 at a gun show in Billings.

It became a 38-55 after Randy Selby did the conversion work and once again I have a half round, half octagon, 24 inch barreled 38-55 high wall that shoots better than I can hold offhand. No, it’s not the original, but as one of the surviving members of the Wild Bunch said at the end of that famous movie, “It’s not the same, but it’ll do!”