What rifles or other hunting equipment have you let slip thur your fingers over the years ??
(This might also lead on to some "stories" about how you actually got some of the rifles you do have, like it did in my case.)


To this day, I still kick myself in my ass for letting my favorite Uncle's 300 Model-99 slip thru my hands when he passed away. At the time, I justified not persuing it because it would have been a special trip back to PA for the estate auction and I would have ended up getting in a bidding war for it ... if I would have went, that succa would have come back home with me regardless of the price !!



The other rifle I was in love with was the very first model-99 I ever shot, that was Dad's 300 Savage Model-99. Sometime after I moved to VA, dad traded it on another rifle, which at the time he told me was a Winchester lever action ... boy was I ever pissed !! I was so pissed, I never even asked to see or looked at that rifle. A couple of years later, after dad passed away, I got that rifle from Sis in a gun case; hell I was still pissed and never even opened the case when I got it, I just tucked it away in the back of the closet and sort of forgot about it.

Bout two years later, and shortly after buying my 3rd Model-99 (a 308 caliber), I figgured it was bout time to dig that rifle of Dad's out and at least record it's serial number. So, after a week or so after having just bought a 308 model-99 (my first one in a 308), I opened the gun case of Dad's and there stairing me in the face was another 308 model-99. Needless to say, I bout shit my britches, Dad had pulled yet one over on me !!



It's also funny how some things tend to work themselves out in the long run. At the time, I was up to my 6th model-99, and my step cousin Ben (who I used to hunt with as a pup) passed away. Ben's passing put me back in contact with my cousin Lee (Ben's step brother). In our conversations and getting caught back up on things, Lee happens to say that he has an old 250-3000 model-99 that was our grandad's (hell I never knew it even existed) and that he was wondering if I wanted and would use it, if he gave it to me !!

After probably wut must have been close to nearly a 1/2 minute of silence till I got my jaw back into position where I could talk again, the first words out my mouth was a big "HELL YEAH" !! Lee quickly became my new "closest favorite" cousin and even thou he hasn't used it at all yet, has a standing invite to use my PA Camp and damn time he pleases !! LOL


99er

I bid on my great, great grandfathers black powder rifle at an auction. I bid up to $6000.00 and stopped. The whole time I was standing beside my dad and he kept saying I was a fool for bidding.
The rifle was purchased by the great great grandson of the rifle's maker

Never really had any "slip thru my fingers", that I wished later I had held onto... I was never much of a "gun-trader"... If I bought a gun, or traded something for one, I most generally held onto it. In fact, I don't recall, off-hand, ever owning one that I don't still have, (now that I got the stolen one back) except for those I bought to give as gifts.......... However, I do have a couple of friends that "go thru" alot of guns... I've known of several they have kept just a couple of weeks or less, shot a bit, then traded for something else... Over the years they have let a number "slip thru their fingers" that they wish now they had held onto...and several that I wish I had talked them out of.