Some backstory:
Back in May an uncle of mine passed away. A few months later my family finally got around to clearing out a good chunk of the stuff from his house. This was especialy hard since it was the house he (and the rest of my father’s family) grew up in, my grandmother living there till just a couple years ago herself, untill her dementia forced us to put her in a care facility. It’s still not comepletely cleaned out, but there was one thing that they family all dreaded having to deal with…my uncle’s gun colelction. Not for a lack of love, far from it, my family are all enthusiastic hunters, but we all knew that:
a) he had a lot of guns
b) every one of his neices and nephews had to get at least one (he had no official will, but he had made mention that he wanted all of us to have at least one of them. He had no children of his own, so us 21 neices and nephews were very close to him.)
c) the rest of them had to be divided up between all his brothers and sisters and the rest of the neices and nephews who might have wanted more than one (since some of us also hunt, but several of my cousins don’t and even one gun is probalby more than they wanted.)
Well, they worked out a very nice system, and finally got down to business. After gathering all the guns in the garage, they did a final count…71.
Let that sink if for a moment.
71 guns.
A few muzzle loaders, a handful of shotguns, several pistols, but mostly hunting rifles. He had some rare/expensive guns, too. Like a couple of sequentially numbered Colt(?) rifles that have never been fired, matching sets of pistols, etc…
The 21 neices and nephews each had they guarenteed one, and that left 50 to be dived up between my father and his six remaining brotyhers and sisters. Yeah…that’s a lot.
Well, after all was said and done, my father walked away with some good rifles and pistols, including a Winchester model 1894 lever-action .30-30 that belonged to my great-grandfather (I figure since my grandmother is 85, and her father supposodly only used that gun and was hunting before she was born (though that part is suspect), it’s in the range of 70-90 years old.)
Instead of choosing which ones my brother and I got (my sister could care less, so probably a small .22 pistol for her), he let us choose (though he did emphasize that he wanted that one rifle that had my uncle’s name engraved on it.)
Well, thankfully, my brother took the one I didn’t want, and left me with a Waverly Mark V .270, with a gray fiberglass stock and a Pentax scope (ALL of my uncle’s rifles (and some pistols) had scopes.) My father informed me that this gun was probably worth $1000-$1500 when purchased. :eek: Holy crap, now I’m afraid to actually USE it! (Well, not really. Come November, I’ll take it out.)
It’s currently still at my parent’s house, no need for me to take it with me, since the hunting camp is back home.
Not sure of the ponit of this OP, but I figured some of the gun and rifle enthusists on the board might get a kick out of it. On the other hand, the ATF may now have to investigate my home town for fears of my family starting up a small militia…